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Feam (Fundación Ambiental del Estado) is investigating a mineral tailings leak at a Gerdau dam located in a district of Ouro Preto, 100 km from Belo Horizonte.
Agency inspectors are on site this Tuesday (1st). Feam was alerted on Friday (28) about the leak in the dam of the Germans, from the Gerdau mine. The structure is located in the Miguel Burnier district, in Ouro Preto.
So far, according to Feam, what is known is that the Aleman stream and Ribeirão Mango were affected by the tailings. Inspectors now check whether the material has settled on the bed and on the banks of these waterways.
Also according to Feam, Gerdau hired a specialized company to operate in the areas affected by the spill. The company will be fined for causing an intervention that results or may result in environmental damage.
Decommissioning
The Alemães dam is a structure with upstream elevation, as well as Brumadinho and Mariana, which broke in 2019 and 2015, respectively.
According to the State Dam Safety Policy, all structures with this lifting method must undergo a decharacterization process.
In the case of this specific dam, Gerdau is waiting for an authorization to remove the vegetation and thus start denaturing works. According to Feam, the structure has stability guaranteed by an auditing company.
Other side
According to Gerdau, responsible for the structure, the German dam has not been broken. For the mining company, what happened was “the passage of a small volume of tailings through the operating spillway.”
“The event occurred in the morning, and the flow was contained by buoys, and in the afternoon the water had normal turbidity. The company informed the competent bodies of the incident. The fact has nothing to do with the structure or safety of the dam. Gerdau reinforces that it strictly follows all environmental and safety legislation of the structure. The company is allocating all the necessary resources for the identification of eventual impacts, including the cleaning of waste, if necessary ”, says the company, in a note.
