{"id":1097336,"date":"2019-01-31T17:48:16","date_gmt":"2019-01-31T17:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mining.com\/?p=967000"},"modified":"2019-01-31T17:48:16","modified_gmt":"2019-01-31T17:48:16","slug":"brazilian-prosecutors-freeze-over-219m-in-vales-assets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/?p=1097336","title":{"rendered":"Brazilian prosecutors freeze over $219m in Vale\u2019s assets"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brazil’s Minas Gerais state labour prosecutors have frozen more than 800 million reais ($219 million) of Vale’s funds as compensation for victims of last week\u2019s tailing burst<\/a>, which killed at least 99 people.<\/p>\n

People located at and near Brumadinho, the town where the breach occurred, are now facing the dangers associated with having toxic elements in the Parapoeba\u00a0river<\/a>, which flows into Sao Francisco, a river that provides drinking water to communities in five of Brazil’s 26 states.<\/p>\n

Minas Gerais’ government confirmed that\u00a0tests of the Paraopeba River indicated it posed risks “to human and animal health.”<\/q><\/p>\n

Minas Gerais’ government said on Thursday<\/a> that initial tests of the Paraopeba River indicated the water of such body \u201cposes risks to human and animal health,\u201d and called locals to refrain from using the river\u2019s water, whatever the purpose.<\/p>\n

Additionally, the city of Mangaratiba, in Rio de Janeiro, has temporarily closed Vale’s Ilha Gua\u00edba (TIG) iron ore terminal. According to CBN radio<\/a><\/em>, the company was also fined 20 million reais (about $5.5 million) for failing to submit environmental licenses.<\/p>\n

The global community has been left with several unanswered questions, particularly about the causes of the dam breach and why Vale didn\u2019t do anything earlier to prevent it. Reuters reported the iron ore producer had identified\u00a0concerns around its tailings dams in 2009<\/a>, but did not implement several steps that could have avoided or lessened the amount of damage.<\/p>\n

\"U.N.<\/p>\n

Vale SA, the world’s largest iron ore miner, has vowed to sacrifice production for safety to avoid another tailings dam failure. (Image: Screenshot from BBC News video.<\/a><\/em>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

In the last 24 hours, UN experts<\/a> and most news outlets have pointed their finger\u00a0at the kind of dam chosen by Vale. The Brumadinho facility, which dates from the 1970s, was built using the \u201cupstream construction\u201d method. This is a design that has long been banned in earthquake-prone mining countries such as Chile and Peru because tailings are used to gradually build the embankment walls, making a dam susceptible to damage and cracks.<\/p>\n

Brazil\u2019s system of inspecting tailing dams involves the miners themselves paying independent consultants to inspect them and then submitting those reports\u00a0to local officials.<\/q><\/p>\n

While Brazil is not as earthquake-prone a nation as its western neighbours, it\u2019s been shown that even small seismic activity can affect tailings dams such as the one near Brumadinho.<\/p>\n

Lindsay Newland, executive director of World Mine Tailings Failures<\/a>, an online database that aims at exposing the cause of those kind of disasters and to teach how to prevent them, argues there was no way Vale could have adopted a different technology to build its dams.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe nature of the ore being produced at most of its mines was not amenable to dry stack, filter or thickening,\u201d she said in an emailed statement. \u201cThat is a problem throughout Brazil\u00a0and throughout the world’s portfolio of 18,000 Tailing Storage Facilities (TSF),\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Legislators, such as Minas Gerais\u2019 own Joao Vitor Xavier have tried to pass legislation banning upstream dams. In July, his measure was defeated without mining companies bothering to join the debate, he told Bloomberg<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Newland says banning upstream dams is not the answer to failures’ prevention. \u201cIt is meaningless to advocate (prohibition of upstream) as a risk reduction. There are as many as 12,000 existing such dams structures all over the world that are full of fines, which is the root cause for unstable conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dirk van Zyl, a professor of mining engineering at the University of British Columbia and EduMine author<\/a>, says that while dry-stack tailings are more stable, they can be as much as ten times more expensive.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of calculations people can use for the cost of a failure,\u201d he said. \u201cYou not only have the real cash cost to the company, but you also open the whole discussion of what a human life is worth?,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a>\u00a0for complete coverage of the dam burst at Vale’s C\u00f3rrego do Feij\u00e3o mine.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The post Brazilian prosecutors freeze over $219m in Vale\u2019s assets<\/a> appeared first on MINING.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Funds expected to be used as compensation for the victims of last week’s tailing burst, which killed at least 99 people.<\/p>\n

The post Brazilian prosecutors freeze over $219m in Vale’s assets<\/a> appeared first on MINING.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1274,1275,404,369,440,703],"tags":[19,294,71],"class_list":["post-1097336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brumadinho","category-corrego-do-feijao","category-mining-news-and-commentary","category-miningcom","category-south-america","category-vale","tag-brazil","tag-iron-ore","tag-latin-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1097336"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1097570,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097336\/revisions\/1097570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1097336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1097336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1097336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}