VIDEOS: Brazil Mining Disaster Devastates Village, Wildlife, Fishing Economy

The government of Brazil is suing for $5.2 billion two multinational mining companies connected to the collapse of a dam in the state of Minas Gerais that killed 13 people and displaced hundreds while destroying homes, devastating river ecosystems and polluting part of the Atlantic Ocean with mud and wastewater containing toxic levels of mercury, arsenic and other metals.

The United Nations’ special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, John Knox, said the equivalent of “20,000 Olympic swimming pools of toxic mud” spewed into the Doce River earlier this month.

The companies are Australia-based BHP Billiton, the world’s largest miner, and Vale, the biggest iron ore specialist.

The Guardian reports:

Environment minister Izabella Teixeira said a lawsuit would be filed demanding that the companies and the mine operator Samarco, which they co-own, create a fund of 20 billion reais to pay for environmental recovery and compensation for victims. […]

“It is not a natural disaster. It is a disaster prompted by economic activity, but of a magnitude equivalent to those disasters created by forces of nature.” […]

The deluge swept down the river Doce to the Atlantic, sparking claims of major contamination, although the mining companies insist there is no serious pollution. […]

Earlier on Friday Vale announced a compensation fund, but did not give figures. Executives also sounded a defiant note, rejecting allegations that the Doce had been badly polluted.

The Guardian also reports:

On Wednesday, the United Nations human rights agency said new evidence showed that the mud “contained high levels of toxic heavy metals and other chemicals”, without specifying what the chemicals were or where the evidence came from.

Tommasi Laboratorio, a company hired by Espirito Santo’s environmental agency to do tests on the water, said it had also found arsenic above legal levels, but that quantities had fallen in recent days. “It’s arsenic that wasn’t there before the dam burst,” said lab owner Bruno Tommasi. He said his tests had found no mercury or uranium and also urged caution about how to interpret the arsenic results. “Different types of arsenic cause varying levels of harm and our tests did not specify what type of arsenic was in the water,” he said.

Biologists working along the river and coastline have been shocked by the impact of the dam burst. The mud has killed thousands of fish, but BHP said they most likely choked to death on the sheer volume of sediment released by the dam, rather than the chemical composition of the sludge.

—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

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