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Fundão Tailings Dam Failures: the Environment Tragedy of the Largest

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Fundão Tailings Dam Failures: the Environment Tragedy of the Largest G Model PECON-24; No. of Pages 7 ARTICLE IN PRESS Perspectives in Ecology and Conservation xxx (2017) xxx–xxx ´ Supported by Boticario Group Foundation for Nature Protection https://www.journals.elsevier.com/perspectives-in-ecology-and-conservation/ Essays and Perspectives Fundão tailings dam failures: the environment tragedy of the largest technological disaster of Brazilian mining in global context a,∗ a a Flávio Fonseca do Carmo , Luciana Hiromi Yoshino Kamino , Rogério Tobias Junior , a a a Iara Christina de Campos , Felipe Fonseca do Carmo , Guilherme Silvino , a a a Kenedy Junio da Silva Xavier de Castro , Mateus Leite Mauro , Nelson Uchoa Alonso Rodrigues , b b Marcos Paulo de Souza Miranda , Carlos Eduardo Ferreira Pinto a Instituto Prístino, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil b MPMG Ministério Público do Estado de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o 3 Article history: After the collapse of the Fundão dam, 43 million m of iron ore tailings continue to cause environmental Received 9 December 2016 damage, polluting 668 km of watercourses from the Doce River to the Atlantic Ocean. The objectives of Accepted 3 June 2017 this study are to characterize the Fundão Tailings Dam and structural failures; improve the understanding Available online xxx of the scale of the disaster; and assess the largest technological disaster in the global context of tailings dam failures. The collapse of Fundão was the biggest environmental disaster of the world mining industry, Keywords: both in terms of the volume of tailings dumped and the magnitude of the damage. More than year after Iron ore the tragedy, Samarco has still not carried out adequate removal, monitoring or disposal of the tailings, Post-disaster management contrary to the premise of the total removal of tailings from affected rivers proposed by the country’s Ecosystem collapse regulatory agencies and the worldwide literature on post-disaster management. Contrary to expectations, Large-Scale Mining Industry Doce River there was a setback in environmental legal planning, such as law relaxation, decrease of resources for regulatory agencies and the absence of effective measures for environmental recovery. It is urgent to review how large-scale extraction of minerals is carried out, the technical and environmental standards involved, and the oversight and monitoring of the associated structures. © 2017 Associac¸ ao˜ Brasileira de Cienciaˆ Ecologica´ e Conservac¸ ao.˜ Published by Elsevier Editora Ltda. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by- nc-nd/4.0/). Introduction In less than 48 h after the collapse of the Fundão dam, a task force was created by the Attorney General’s Office of the State of One year after the collapse of the Fundão tailings dam, more Minas Gerais, whose main objective was to ascertain the facts of 3 than 43 million m (Samarco, 2016a) of iron ore tailings are still the environmental tragedy and the repercussions on the 17 dis- causing environmental damage, polluting 668 km of watercourses tricts and 36 municipalities directly affected by the mud wave. from the Doce River Basin to the Atlantic Ocean. The volume of The Minas Gerais State Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPMG) worked pollutants and the extent of ecosystems affected have assumed intensively and produced, through related teams, hundreds of tech- unprecedented proportions, involving the Brazilian Atlantic For- nical documents and expert reports. Among these studies, the 120 est – one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots (Mittermeier et al., technical documents of the Prístino Institute (inspection reports, 2005), estuarine, coastal and marine environments. Furthermore, technical reports, studies and maps), developed in partnership with it affected other priority areas for the conservation of biodiversity the MPMG Geoprocessing Nucleus, identified the main environ- and cultural heritage (MMA, 2007), such as the iron geosystems of mental damage, which supported most of the results of the present the Quadrilátero Ferrífero (Carmo and Kamino, 2015). work (CAOMA, 2016). The mining company Samarco Minerac¸ ão S/A (a joint venture between Vale S/A and BHP Billiton), responsible for the Fundão dam, produced technical documents stating the main emergency ∗ measures adopted and the initial planning for environmental Corresponding author. E-mail address: fl[email protected] (F.F. Carmo). recovery. According to the company, the emergency recovery work http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pecon.2017.06.002 1679-0073/© 2017 Associac¸ ao˜ Brasileira de Cienciaˆ Ecologica´ e Conservac¸ ao.˜ Published by Elsevier Editora Ltda. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Please cite this article in press as: Carmo, F.F., et al. Fundão tailings dam failures: the environment tragedy of the largest technological disaster of Brazilian mining in global context. Perspect Ecol Conserv. (2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pecon.2017.06.002 G Model PECON-24; No. of Pages 7 ARTICLE IN PRESS 2 F.F. Carmo et al. / Perspectives in Ecology and Conservation xxx (2017) xxx–xxx prioritized the remaining structures of the dams of the mining com- saturation of sandy material. In some situations, emergency meas- plex and, after that, tailings containment dams were constructed ures were implemented (Samarco, 2016b), one of them known as within the limits of its properties (Samarco, 2016a,b). Up to the retreat of the dam axis was begun in 2013. According to Samarco present moment, priority has been given to the recovery of the (2016b), the retreat represented: “. a temporary solution, it was physical environment. However, a federal agency responsible for decided to realign the dam on the left shoulder by moving it behind inspection and monitoring for the purposes of environmental qual- the section of the gallery to be filled with concrete, in order to ity recovery, evaluated the inadequacy and inconsistency of the allow the continuation of the landfill embankment. (. .) The retreat data presented. It stated that the actions performed by the com- would move the crest closer to the water of the reservoir and the pany are still insufficient to guarantee the reduction of the damage mud contained within, but it was anticipated that the dam would caused by the tailings, resulting in 13 notices of infraction and an quickly return to its original alignment once the buffering opera- environmental fine (IBAMA, 2016a). tions were done.” The main objectives of the study, based on this scenario, are: However, the retreat was maintained until the collapse of the detail the structural features and possible structural failures that dam. According to Samarco (2016b): “As the dam embankment led to the collapse; improve the understanding of the scale of the continued, surface upwellings began to appear at the retreat of disaster from the detailed measurement of the damage caused to the left shoulder at various elevations and on various occasions ecosystems, protected areas, real estate and cultural heritage; com- during 2013. The saturated mass with sandy tailings was growing, pare and highlight this disaster in the context of global tailings and in August 2014, the drainage carpet controlling this satura- dam failures; detail cases of the post-disaster actions and reflect on tion reached its maximum capacity. Meanwhile, the mud under the whether lessons had been learned about Brazilian tailings failure. landfill was responding to the increase in the load that was being deposited by the embankment. The way in which it responded, and the consequent effect on the sands, was what finally made the sands Fundão Tailings Dam: structural features and liquefy.” environmental damage Technical reports on the Fundão disaster (Samarco, 2016b) con- cluded that the collapse was due to liquefaction of the material, Structural features a phenomenon that occurs when solid materials (sandy tailings) lose their mechanical resistance and present fluid characteristics. The Fundão dam was one of the megastructures of the Germano Basically, the disaster occurred because of some key factors such mining complex, located in the municipality of Mariana, Minas as: structural damage to the starter dike, resulting in increased sat- Gerais, southeastern Brazil. The mining complex had an installed uration; the attempt to solve structural problems with a concrete capacity of 23 million tons/year of iron ore concentrate. In addi- gallery that caused the axis of the dam to retract (Fig. 1), later being tion to Fundão, the complex contained two more dams: Santarém raised on mud; and the unforeseen deposition of sludge in criti- and Germano, the latter being the highest dam in Brazil, with a 3 cal regions. In upstream embankment dams, it is essential for the height of 175 m and a projected volume of up to 160 million m stability of the structure that the deposition of unsaturated sandy of tailings (Samarco, 2013). Open pit mines, piles of sterile mate- tailing create a beach, at least 200 m wide, immediately upstream rial deposits, industrial plants and pipelines are also part of the of the dam crest. Germano Complex. The Fundão dam began operating in 2008 and was designed 3 Environmental and cultural damage to contain a total of 79.6 million m of fine tailings (mud) and 3 32 million m of sandy tailings during its 25-year lifespan (SUPRAM, 3 The total collapse of the Fundão tailings dam took place 2008). In November 2015, Fundão contained 56.4 million m of iron on 05 November 2015, between 3:00 pm and 4:00 pm. About ore tailings deposited in merely seven years of operation, a result 3 43 million m of tailings (80% of the total contained volume) were of the never-before attained records of Brazilian production in the unleashed, generating mud waves 10 m high, killing 19 people and years 2013 to 2015 (IBRAM, 2015).
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