Vale, the Brazilian mining company responsible for two deadly dam collapses since 2015, has another dam that’s at “imminent risk of rupture,” a government audit warns.
The Xingu dam at Vale’s Alegria mine in Mariana municipality, Minas Gerais state, has been retired since 1998, but excess water in the mining waste that it’s holding back threatens to liquefy the embankment and spark a potentially disastrous collapse.
Liquefaction also caused the collapse of a Vale tailings dam in 2019 in Brumadinho municipality, also in Minas Gerais, that killed nearly 300 people; the 2015 collapse of another Vale dam, in Mariana in 2015, caused extensive pollution and is considered Brazil’s worst environmental disaster to date.
Vale has denied the risk of a collapse at the Xingu dam and says it continues to monitor the structure ahead of its decommissioning; regulators, however, say the company still hasn’t carried out requested measures to improve the structure’s safety, and have ordered an evacuation of the immediate vicinity.
This article originally appeared in Mongabay.
Featured image: Vale’s Xingu mining complex in Mariana. Image by Google.
A dam holding back mining waste from Brazilian miner Vale is at risk of collapsing, a government audit says. The same company was responsible for two tailings dam collapses since 2015 that unleashed millions of gallons of toxic sludge and killed hundreds of people in Brazil’s southeastern state of Minas Gerais.
The retired Xingu dam at Vale’s Alegria iron ore mine in Mariana — the same municipality where a Vale tailings dam collapsed in November 2015 in what’s considered Brazil’s worst environmental disaster to date — is at “serious and imminent risk of rupture by liquefaction,” according to an audit report from the Minas Gerais state labor department (SRT), cited by government news agency Agência Brasil. The SRT did not immediately reply to Mongabay’s emailed requests for comment; it also did not answer any phone calls.
In the May 20 audit report, only released last week, the SRT said the Xingu dam “does not present stability conditions.” “It is, therefore, an extremely serious situation that puts at risk workers who perform activities, access or remain on the crest, on the downstream slopes, in the flood area and in the area on the tailings upstream of the dam,” the document says.
In a statement, Vale denied the imminent risk, saying the dam “is monitored and inspected daily.” It said the structure’s conditions and safety level remain unchanged, rated level 2 on a three-point scale.
The 2015 collapse of the Fundão tailings dam belonging to Samarco, a joint venture between Vale and Anglo-Australian miner BHP Billiton, killed 19 people in the village of Bento Rodrigues, burying them in toxic mud, and flushing mining waste into rivers that affected 39 municipalities across two states. The mining waste eventually flowed more than 650 kilometers (400 miles) from its source to the Atlantic Ocean.
The district prosecutor’s office in Mariana told Mongabay that the Minas Gerais state prosecutor-general has requested the National Mining Agency (ANM) to assess the real risk of the dam rupture. “Any irregularity in the change in the classification of the structure will be evaluated after the inspection carried out by the ANM and, if necessary, with subsequent investigations,” the district prosecutor’s office said.
The ANM rated the Xingu dam’s safety at level 2 in a September 2020 assessment, after requesting Vale to improve the structure. Vale has fulfilled part of the request, but has sought a deadline extension for other repair works, without major changes in the structure, according to the ANM’s website.
In its most recent inspection, on May 5, ANM identified structural problems where no corrective measures had been implemented, according to its website. By then, the ANM considered the potential environmental impact “relevant” and the socioeconomic impact “medium,” given the concentration of residential, farming and industrial facilities located downstream of the dam.
Vale ceased dumping mining waste in the Xingu dam in 1998, but keeps workers on site to monitor the dam’s stability until it’s fully decommissioned. The decommissioning plans is in place but hasn’t been carried out yet, according to Ronilton Condessa, director of the Mariana mining workers’ union, Metabase. No timeline has been given for the decommissioning; a similar structure, the Doutor dam at Vale’s Timbopeba mine in neighboring Ouro Preto municipality, will take up to nine years.
Last week, Vale announced the suspension of train operations to the Mariana complex where its Alegria mine is located, after an evacuation order from labor auditors. The area in the immediate vicinity of the mine, known as the self-rescue zone, remains evacuated. Work at both the Timbopeba and Alegria mines has been halted.
Condessa said that because the Xingu dam is located inside the mining complex, workers continue to pass by it daily on their way to other mines that are still active.
Vale has scheduled a meeting with workers from the dam for June 16 to explain the current situation, according to Condessa. “The evacuation orders look like a preventive measure, but we still need to see a technical study in order to properly evaluate the risk,” he told Mongabay in a phone interview.
The Minas Gerais state civil defense agency said the evacuation of the self-rescue zone was ordered on a “preventive basis to protect the lives of people living downstream of the dam.”
“In collaboration with the SRT, Vale is taking measures to continue to guarantee the safety of workers, in order to resume activities,” Vale said in a June 4 statement.
A two-and-a-half-hour drive west of the Alegria mine in Mariana is the municipality of Brumadinho. This was the site in 2019 of Brazil’s deadliest mining disaster, when a tailings dam at Vale’s Córrego do Feijão iron ore mine collapsed, killing nearly 300 people. The cause of the dam’s failure was attributed to a process known as liquefaction, in which excess water weakens the dam’s embankment. This is the same risk recently identified at the Xingu dam at Vale’s Alegria mine.
Editor’s note: This article, which originally appeared in The Ecologist, clearly shows the strong contradiction between the bright green hope of a transition to “green energy” and the material reality. The dirty secret of “Green energy” is that it requires a lot of rare resources which have to be extracted by heavy mining.
By Hannibal Rhoades
Communities, organisations and academics write to the EU to reject plans for a mining-heavy EU Green Deal.
A global coalition of more than 180 community platforms, human rights and environmental organisations and academics from 36 nations is calling on the EU to abandon its plans to massively expand dirty mining as part of EU Green Deal and Green Recovery plans.
The EU policies and plans will drastically increase destructive mining in Europe and in the Global South if left unchanged, which is bad news for the climate, ecosystems and human rights around the world, the coalition explains.
“The EU is embarking on a desperate plunder for raw materials,” says Meadhbh Bolger, the resource justice campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe.
Transition
“Instead of delivering a greener economy, the European Commission’s plans will lead to more extraction beyond ecological limits, more exploitation of communities and their land, and new toxic trade deals. Europe is consuming as if we had three planets available.”
The signatories – coordinated by the European Working Group at the Yes to Life, No to Mining campaign – are united in support of an urgent and rapid transition to renewable energy.
However, they argue that relying on expanding mining to meet the material needs of this transition will replicate the injustices, destruction and dangerous assumptions that have caused climate breakdown in the first place.
Threats
“The EU growth and Green Deal plans must consider a deep respect of the rights of affected communities in the Global South, that are opposing the destruction of their lands, defending water and even their lives,” said Guadalupe Rodriguez, the Latin American contact person for the global Yes to Life, No to Mining solidarity network.
“A strong collective voice is arising from affected communities around the planet, denouncing hundreds of new mining projects for European consumption. Their urgent message needs to be heard in the North: yes to life – no to mining.”
Yvonne Orengo of Andrew Lees Trust, which is supporting mining affected communities in Madagascar, added: “Research shows that a mining-intensive green transition will pose significant new threats to biodiversity that is critical to regulating our shared climate. It is absolutely clear we cannot mine our way out of the climate crisis.
Circularity
“Moreover, there is no such thing as ‘green mining’. We need an EU Green Deal that addresses the root causes of climate change, including the role that mining and extractivism play in biodiversity loss.”
The statement sets out a number of actions the EU can take to change course towards climate and environmental justice, including recognising in law communities’ Right to Say No to unwanted extractive projects and respect for Indigenous Peoples’ right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent.
Joám Evans, from the Froxán community in Galicia, said: “Communities fighting at the frontlines of extraction are forcing minerals to stay in the ground. This is critical for helping us take circularity seriously and rethink the ideology of growth. Communities have a right to say no and will enforce it regardless of greenwashing, corruption and repression.”
Realign
Other recommendations take aim at EU overconsumption of minerals and energy, calling for binding targets to reduce EU material consumption of materials in absolute terms and for just de-growth strategies, not ‘green growth’ or ‘decoupling’, to be placed at the heart of EU climate and environmental action.
Diego Marin of the European Environmental Bureau concluded: “Simply put, we need to drastically reduce the amount of resources used and consumed in the EU and move to truly circular solutions.
“Legislation like the EU battery regulation is a step in the right direction, but must go further. Transport decarbonisation, decarbonisation of all kinds, in fact, can only be achieved with a strong reduction in demand. We need to realign our priorities to meet climate goals.”
This Author
Hannibal Rhoades is YLNM contact person for Northern Europe and head of communications at The Gaia Foundation (UK).
SIXTEEN MILLION YEARS AGO, a volcano erupted over the Yellowstone hotspot near the present-day border of Oregon and Nevada. The blast expelled 1,000 cubic kilometers of rhyolite lava as the land collapsed into a 30-mile-long, keyhole-shaped caldera. Magma, ash, and other sediments entered the keyhole, and for the next million years the clay-rich land rose and reformed like bread dough in a proofing drawer. Water mixed with the clay, bringing to Earth’s surface a swirl of chemical elements like uranium, mercury, and another metal that, when isolated and cut, shines silvery white — lithium.
Today, above ground, the McDermitt Caldera is a remote landscape of rocky outcrops, high-desert plateaus, and meadows of wild rye. As in much of the Great Basin, desert plants fill the “currents, tides, eddies, and embayments” of this “sagebrush ocean,” as writer Stephen Trimble once described it. Lithium rests beneath this dynamic sea.
On the southwest edge of the caldera, in Humboldt County, Nevada, nestled between the Double H Mountains to the south and the Montana range to the north, Thacker Pass rides the crest of a sagebrush wave. The pass is a corridor for herds of migrating pronghorn and mule deer. Overhead, golden eagles hunt for kangaroo rats. Below, greater sage grouse perform their mating dance. In the nearby springs and drainages, an endemic snail called the Kings River pyrg and the imperiled Lahontan cutthroat trout persist on precious water.
Biodiversity is plummeting, but restoring rivers could quickly reverse this disastrous trend.
This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
By Alessandra Korap Munduruku, Darryl Knudsen and Irikefe V. Dafe
In October 2021, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) will meet in China to adopt a new post-2020 global biodiversity framework to reverse biodiversity loss and its impacts on ecosystems, species and people. The conference is being held during a moment of great urgency: According to a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we now have less than 10 years to halve our greenhouse gas emissions to stave off catastrophic climate change. At the same time, climate change is exacerbating the accelerating biodiversity crisis. Half of the planet’s species may face extinction by the end of this century.
And tragically, according to a UN report, “the world has failed to meet a single target to stem the destruction of wildlife and life-sustaining ecosystems in the last decade.”
It’s time to end that legacy of failure and seize the opportunities before us to correct the past mistakes, manage the present challenges and meet the future challenges that the environment is likely to face. But if we’re going to protect biodiversity and simultaneously tackle the climate crisis, we must protect rivers and freshwater ecosystems. And we must defend the rights of communities whose livelihoods depend on them, and who serve as their stewards and defenders. By doing so, we will improve food security for the hundreds of millions of people who rely on freshwater ecosystems for sustenance and livelihoods—and give the world’s estimated 140,000 freshwater species a fighting chance at survival.
Rivers Are Heroes of Biodiversity
At the upcoming CBD, countries are expected to reach an agreement to protect 30 percent of the world’s oceans and land by 2030. But which land is protected, as part of this agreement, matters immensely. We cannot protect just any swath of land and consider our work done. Member countries must prioritize protecting regions where biodiversity is highest, or where restoration will bring the greatest net benefits. Rivers, which support an extraordinary number of species, must be a priority zone for protection and restoration.
Rivers are unsung heroes of biodiversity: Though freshwater covers less than 1 percent of all the water on the planet’s surface, it provides habitats for an astonishing number of species. Rivers are vital for conserving and sustaining wetlands, which house or provide breeding grounds for around 40 percent of Earth’s species. That is a staggering amount of life in a very small geographic area—and those figures don’t account for all the adjacent forests and other ecosystems, as well as people’s livelihoods that rely on rivers.
Reversing the Decline of Rivers and Freshwater Ecosystems
Freshwater ecosystems have suffered from some of the most rapid declines in the last four decades. A global study conducted by the World Wildlife Fund, “Living Planet Report 2020,” states that populations of global freshwater species have declined by 84 percent, “equivalent to 4 percent per year since 1970.”
That is, by any measure, a catastrophe. Yet mainstream development models, water management policies and conservation and protected area policies continue to ignore the integrity of freshwater ecosystems and the livelihoods of communities that depend on them.
As a result of these misguided policies, fisheries that sustain millions of people are collapsing. Freshwater is increasingly becoming degraded, and riverbank farming is suffering as a result of this. Additionally, we’re seeing Indigenous peoples, who have long been careful and successful stewards of their lands and waters, face increasing threats to their autonomy and well-being. The loss of biodiversity, and the attendant degradation of precious freshwater, directly impacts food and water security and livelihoods.
But this catastrophe also suggests that by prioritizing river protection as part of that 30 percent goal, the global community could slow down and begin to reverse some of the most egregious losses of biodiversity. We have an incredible opportunity to swiftly reverse significant environmental degradation and support the rebound of myriad species while bolstering food security for millions of people. But to do that successfully, COP countries must prioritize rivers and river communities.
Here are a few things countries can do immediately to halt the destruction of biodiversity:
1. Immediately Halt Dam-Building in Protected Areas
Dams remain one of the great threats to a river’s health, and particularly to protected areas. More than 500 dams are currently being planned in protected areas around the globe, states Yale Environment 360, while referring to a study published in Conservation Letters. In one of the most egregious examples, Tanzania is moving ahead with plans to construct the Stiegler’s Gorge dam in the Selous Game Reserve—which has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1982 and an iconic refuge for wildlife. In terms of protecting biodiversity, canceling dams like these is low-hanging fruit if the idea of a “protected area” is to have any meaning at all.
2. Create Development ‘No-Go’ Zones on the World’s Most Biodiverse Rivers
Freshwater ecosystems face myriad threats from extractive industries like mining and petroleum as well as agribusiness and cattle ranching, overfishing, industrialization of waterways and urban industrial pollution. Investors, financiers, governments and CBD signatories must put an immediate halt to destructive development in biodiversity hotspots, legally protect the most biodiverse rivers from development, and decommission the planet’s most lethal dams.
3. Pass Strong Water Protection Policies
Most policymakers and decision-makers—and even some conservation organizations—don’t fully understand how freshwater ecosystems and the hydrological cycle function, and how intimately tied they are to the health of the terrestrial ecosystems they want to protect. Rivers and freshwater ecosystems urgently need robust protections, including policies that permanently protect freshwater and the rights of communities that depend on them. In some places, this may go as far as granting rivers the rights of personhood. A growing global Rights of Nature and Rights of Rivers movement is beginning to tackle just this.
4. Respect the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Other Traditional Communities
Indigenous peoples protect “about 80 percent of the global biodiversity,” according to an article by National Geographic, even though they make up just 5 percent of the world’s population. These are the world’s frontline defenders of water and biodiversity; we owe them an enormous debt. More importantly, they deserve protection. It’s imperative governments respect Indigenous people’s territorial rights, as well as their right to self-determination and free, prior and informed consent regarding projects that affect their waters and livelihoods.
Many Indigenous communities like the Munduruku in the Amazon are fighting to defend their territories, rivers and culture. Threats to fishing and livelihoods from destructive dams, gold mining pollution and industrial facilities can be constant in the Tapajós River Basin in the Amazon and many other Indigenous territories.
5. Elevate Women Leaders
In many cultures, women are traditionally the stewards of freshwater, but they are excluded from the decision-making processes. In response, they have become leaders in movements to protect rivers and freshwater ecosystems around the globe. From the Teesta River in India to the Brazilian Amazon, women are leading a burgeoning river rights movement. A demand to include women’s voices in policy, governments and localities will ensure better decisions in governing shared waters.
The pursuit of perpetual unchecked economic growth with little regard for human rights or ecosystem health has led our planet to a state of crisis. Floods, wildfires, climate refugees and biodiversity collapse are no longer hallmarks of a distant future: They are here. In this new era, we must abandon rampant economic growth as a metric of success and instead prioritize equity and well-being.
Free-flowing rivers are a critical safety net that supports our existence. To reverse the biodiversity crisis, we must follow the lead of Indigenous groups, elevate women’s leadership, grant rights to rivers, radically reduce dam-building and address other key threats to freshwater.
What we agree to do over the next decade will determine our and the next generations’ fate. We are the natural world. Its destruction is our destruction. The power to halt this destruction lies in our hands; we only have to use it.
Alessandra Korap Munduruku is a Munduruku Indigenous woman leader from Indigenous Reserve Praia do Índio in the Brazilian Amazon. She is a member of Pariri, a local Munduruku association, as well as the Munduruku Wakoborûn Women’s Association. In 2020, Alessandra won the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award for her work defending the culture, livelihoods and rights of Indigenous peoples in Brazil.
Darryl Knudsen is the executive director of International Rivers. He has 20 years’ experience channeling the power of civil society movements to create enduring, positive change toward social and environmental justice for the underrepresented. Darryl holds a master’s degree from Columbia University and a BA from Dartmouth College.
Irikefe V. Dafe has advocated for river protections in Nigeria and throughout Africa for three decades. Much of his work has focused on protecting the River Ethiope and the rights of communities who rely upon the river for food, water and their livelihoods. He is a lead organizer of the First National Dialogue on Rights of Nature in Nigeria. He is also the founder and CEO of River Ethiope Trust Foundation and an expert member of the UN Harmony with Nature Initiative.
Featured image: Arctic polar bear with cubs. (Credit: USFWS)
Contact: Kristen Monsell, (510) 844-7137, kmonsell@biologicaldiversity.org
ANCHORAGE, Alaska— The Biden administration issued a proposed rule today allowing oil companies operating in the Beaufort Sea and Western Arctic to harass polar bears and Pacific walruses when drilling or searching for oil for the next five years.
“It’s maddening to see the Biden administration allowing oil companies to continue their noisy, harmful onslaught on polar bears. Oil in this sensitive habitat should stay in the ground,” said Kristen Monsell, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “President Biden promised bold action to address the climate crisis, yet his administration is proposing to allow business-as-usual oil drilling in the Arctic. Polar bears and walruses could pay a terrible price.”
The Southern Beaufort Sea population is the most imperiled polar bear population in the world. With only about 900 bears remaining, scientists have determined that the survival of every individual bear is vital to the survival and recovery of the population.
The heavy equipment used in seismic exploration and drilling activities can crush polar bears in their dens or scare polar bears out of their dens too early, leaving cubs to die of exposure or abandonment by their mothers. The noise generated by routine operations can disturb essential polar bear behavior and increase their energy output.
Walruses are also incredibly sensitive to human disturbance. Without summer sea ice for resting, walrus mothers and calves have been forced to come ashore, where they are vulnerable to being trampled to death in stampedes when startled by noise.
In addition to seismic exploration, the rule covers construction and operation of roads, pipelines, runways, and other support facilities. It also covers well drilling, drill rig transport, truck and helicopter traffic, and other activities.
The Marine Mammal Protection Act generally prohibits killing, harming or harassing a marine mammal. The statute allows the federal government to authorize certain industrial activities to harm and harass marine mammals, provided such activities will take only a “small number” of animals and have no more than a “negligible impact” on the population.
The proposed rule covers existing and planned activities across a wide swath of Alaska’s Arctic, including 7.9 million acres in the Beaufort Sea, and onshore activities from Point Barrow to the western boundary of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It includes the Willow development project that the Center and allies have challenged in court, and which the Biden administration this week submitted a brief defending.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will be accepting public comment on the proposed rule for 30 days.
The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.7 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
Heavily armed goldminers have launched a series of attacks on the Yanomami community of Palimiú in the northern Amazon.
Hutukara Yanomami Association reports that on May 16, 15 boats full of miners opened fire on the community and hurled tear gas canisters at them. The Yanomami report suffering from burning eyes and choking on the gas.
The attack follows an earlier assault on the same community on May 10, when one Yanomami was wounded, and several miners were injured. Footage filmed by a Yanomami captures the miners opening fire from their boat at a group of Yanomami on the riverbank. Several boats full of miners continued to fire at the Yanomami for the next 30 minutes.
In the chaos of the attack many Yanomami children fled into the forest to hide. Two days later the bodies of two children, aged one and five, were discovered floating in the river where they had drowned.
Eight Yanomami representatives from Palimiú travelled to Boa Vista, the state capital, to denounce the attack and to demand the authorities investigate it. In a press conference held on May 15, they expressed their anger at being abandoned by the state.
Timóteo Palimithëri said: “We are exhausted and barely able to hold out. Please, it’s urgent, don’t you see? The police and FUNAI have to be strong… If the army and police don’t act now many indigenous people will certainly die.”
In a letter to the police, community leaders denounced the terrible impacts of the mining activities: “The goldminers have been here since 2012 and to date, 578 Yanomami have died from poisoning, yet not a single measure has been taken to stop this. They are destroying our rivers, polluting the water, fish and all the animals. We have serious health problems. We can no longer bathe in the river and both adults and children are losing their hair because of the toxic chemicals they pour into the river.”
Since February the community of Palimiú has repeatedly asked the authorities to remove the miners. The miners’ attacks this week were reportedly in response to the refusal by the Yanomami to let them collect fuel, quadbikes and equipment they had left there to supply their illegal mine upstream.
Intercepted audio messages by the miners refer to an armed gang operating in the region
Unless the authorities take decisive action now, criminal gangs and drug traffickers are likely to carry out more violent attacks. Last year miners murdered two Yanomami.
There are an estimated 20,000 goldminers working illegally in the Yanomami territory.
Concerns are growing for the safety of uncontacted Yanomami communities, one of which is in a region where miners are operating: the miners reportedly attacked their community in 2018.
A humanitarian crisis is engulfing the Yanomami, who are already reeling from high rates of malaria (in 2020 the indigenous health department registered 20,000 cases of malaria) and Covid-19, a lethal combination which is devastating their health and ability to feed themselves.
This is graphically illustrated in a photo, taken on April 17, of a severely malnourished Yanomami child suffering from malaria, pneumonia and dehydration.
The government’s genocidal policies and criminal neglect are killing the Yanomami and other indigenous peoples in Brazil. Please support the Yanomami in their protest.
![The Rush For White Gold [Dispatches from Thacker Pass]](https://dgrnewsservice.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2021/06/APrice-ThackerPasssky-1080x675-1.jpg)
