“Chernobyl of the Mining Industry”
RIO DE JANEIRO – Brazilian regulators plan to tighten rules on dams used in the mining industry after a breach last year caused the nation’s worst environmental disaster but the changes, while opposed by struggling companies, look unlikely to improve safety.
Environmental authorities say they will demand an increase in the number and focus of audits for hundreds of dams holding mining waste, known as tailings. They also want to limit the size of dams and how often their walls can be raised to store more waste.
But engineers, prosecutors and tailings dam experts interviewed by Reuters say the changes will do little to prevent another tragedy if Brazil’s chronically under-resourced regulators are not themselves improved.
When the Fundao dam burst in November at the Samarco mine, owned by BHP Billiton and Vale SA, enough mud to fill 12,000 Olympic swimming pools flattened an entire village, killed 19 people and left hundreds homeless.
The sludge flooded the Rio Doce river, choking fish and spitting them lifeless to the surface.
“Fundao is the Chernobyl of the mining industry. There is a before and there is an after,” said Geraldo Abreu, head of licensing at the Semad environmental agency for the state of Minas Gerais where the spill occurred.
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