“Today marks five years since the crime that left Brumadinho (municipality in the state of Minas Gerais (southeast)) in the mud, costing lives and destroying the environment. Five years and Vale has done nothing to repair the destruction caused,” Lula told the social network X (formerly Twitter).
He estimated that “it is necessary to provide protection to the families of the victims, environmental rehabilitation and, above all, inspection and prevention in mining projects in order to prevent new tragedies such as Brumadinho and Mariana”, the latter being another dam that collapsed on November 5, 2015 and also includes Vale.
In addition to the 270 deaths, the Brumadinho tragedy also affected communities and the flora and fauna of the mining region.
There are still three bodies buried in the mud.
The mining company signed a reparation agreement with the Government of Minas Gerais, the federal and state ministries, and the Mining Public Defender's Office on February 4, 2021.
With an estimated value of 37.7 billion reais (about eight million dollars), the agreement defines the multinational company's commitments to the socio-economic and socio-environmental response to the disaster.
After the dam's containment dams burst on January 25, 2019, a torrent of mud and mining waste (more than 12 million cubic meters) poured out, destroying everything in its path.
Such a disaster is the seventh that the state has mourned in just 15 years, an average of more than one break every two years (1.85 years).
On this occasion, an analysis by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), based on satellite images of the Brumadinho collapse and maps before the tragedy, revealed that about 125 hectares of forest were lost.
This corresponds to more than a million square meters or 125 football fields.
The area where the mining disruption occurred is part of the Mata Atlántica forest formation (neotropical plant formation found in Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina) and is transitional to the Cerrado (large national tropical savanna ecoregion), which begins a few kilometers downstream.
Given the area of mud covered, the loss of habitat even affected forest groups, fragmenting and making it difficult to connect these areas.
The accident ended five calendar years of criminal proceedings with no prospect of a final trial.
Of the 16 defendants in court, at least one was not summoned.
Gas/OCS