L'or de france: Brazil sues BHP, Vale for 'initial' $5 billion over spill

vendredi 27 novembre 2015

Brazil sues BHP, Vale for 'initial' $5 billion over spill

Brazil suing BHP, Vale for $5 billion over spill

Screenshot from PigMine 7, via YouTube

Brazil's federal government and two states are suing Samarco, an iron ore miner jointly owned by BHP Billiton and Vale, for $5.3 billion over a catastrophic tailings dam burst that devastated the country's second largest river system, the Rio Doce.

The government attorney general, the Advocacia-Geral da União, or AGU, announced the 20 billion real civil damages lawsuit late on Friday, but warned that "the figure is preliminary and could be raised over the judicial process, since the environmental damages of the mud’s arrival at the ocean have not yet been calculated."

The November 5 disaster that killed at least 15 people caused 60 million cubic metres of mine waste – a mix of water, iron and other waste materials such as silica — from the site in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state to wash downstream into neighbouring state Espírito Santo through remote mountain valleys reaching the Atlantic ocean 600 kilometres away earlier this week.

Toxic materials, including arsenic, and levels of lead, aluminum, chromium, nickel and cadmium many times higher than the legal maximums, were found in the waters of the Rio Doce by a United Nations team and confirmed by Vale on Friday.

Vale and BHP also on Friday announced the establishment of a fund of undisclosed size to help restore the environment. Brazil's environmental watchdog earlier levied a 250 million real ($65 million) fine on Samarco.