Source: AFP
Mining giants Vale and BHP have offered to pay a nearly $25 billion settlement over a 2015 dam collapse in Brazil that killed 19 people and flooded dozens of towns, Vale said on Monday.
The companies proposed paying 127 billion reais, or nearly $25 billion, for “definitive restoration” of damage in one of the country’s worst environmental disasters, the Brazilian company said in a statement.
The amount included more than $7 billion already spent on repairs and compensation for some 430,000 affected people, he added.
The tragedy in the southeastern city of Mariana unleashed a torrent of nearly 40 million cubic meters of highly toxic mining waste sludge, killing 19 people, flooding 39 towns and leaving more than 600 homeless.
The tailings dam that collapsed at an iron ore mine was owned by Samarco, a joint venture between Brazil’s Vale and Anglo-Australian miner BHP.
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The towns of Bento Rodrigues and Paracatu de Baixo were wiped off the map when the copper waste iron ore roared down the mountainside.
The affected areas remain ghost towns, with thousands of people waiting for some form of compensation.
Vale and BHP are also facing a UK class action over the incident, involving up to 700,000 victims.
Another collapse
According to a United Nations estimate shortly after the disaster, waste from the Fundao tailings dam traveled hundreds of kilometers through the Doce River and its tributaries to the Atlantic Ocean.
The flood killed thousands of animals and destroyed protected rainforest areas.
In January, a Brazilian court ordered Vale, BHP and Samarco to pay almost $10 billion in damages, with additional interest from 2015, when the tragedy occurred.
![](https://images.yen.com.gh/images/16270b1e7b516f49.jpg?impolicy=cropped-image&imwidth=256)
![](https://images.yen.com.gh/images/16270b1e7b516f49.jpg?impolicy=cropped-image&imwidth=256)
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Valle said his settlement proposal must be approved by all parties, otherwise negotiations will begin again.
The proposed amount includes about $14 billion in compensation to the federal government, the two affected states and municipalities.
Vale said 85 percent of the affected communities have been resettled.
In 2019, another Vale-owned dam collapsed in the same state of Minas Gerais, unleashing a flood of toxic sludge and killing 270 people in Brazil’s deadliest industrial accident.
Vale agreed to pay $7 billion in damages in that case, including environmental cleanup, plus an additional 3.5 billion reais to victims’ families and others affected.
Source: AFP