BENTO RODRIGUES (awp international) – Around nine years after the Bento Rodrigues dam burst in Brazil, the mining companies responsible have to pay billions in compensation. The government signed the new agreement with the mining operator Samarco and its parent companies – the Brazilian group Vale and the Australian-British group BHP Billiton – with the payment of 132 billion reais (around 21 billion euros). According to government figures, the “Tragedy of Mariana” went down in history as the country’s worst environmental disaster. The payment, part of which runs over a period of 20 years, is considered compensation for the damage to people, the environment and infrastructure.
On November 5, 2015, a mudslide destroyed the town of Bento Rodrigues, killing 19 people. The dam burst in the retention basin of an iron ore mine in the state of Minas Gerais caused the disaster. Around 40 million cubic meters of toxic wastewater leaked from the retention basin of an iron ore mine into the Doce River and contaminated hundreds of kilometers.
“I hope that the mining companies have learned a lesson from this. It would have been much cheaper to avoid what happened, infinitely cheaper. It certainly would not have cost 20 billion reais to avoid the disaster,” said Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva makes his first public appearance after his domestic accident. He suffered a cut on the back of his head, which is why he did not travel to Russia for the summit of the Brics group of states.
Legal proceedings also in Great Britain
Additional legal proceedings are underway in the UK following a class action lawsuit by more than 620,000 people. They are demanding compensation from the Australian-British raw materials company BHP. The settlement in Brazil represents just a first step in an ongoing fight for justice, said plaintiffs’ attorney Tom Goodhead. “Our court case will hold BHP publicly to account and set a precedent that will make it more difficult for multinational companies generally to neglect their responsibilities to the communities in which they operate.”/ppz/DP/he
