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By Hugo Melo

Samarco Fundão Dam Environmental Recovery Actions

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At the end of 2015, Brazil witnessed the rupture of the Samarco Fundão dam. The largest monitoring and recovery program in the country’s history was implemented to address the unprecedented environmental impacts. The Renova foundation was created to address socio-environmental issues and the restoration of the Doce River. In 2017, SRK Brazil was contracted by the Renova Foundation to undertake a peer review of environmental studies related to the environmental recovery actions along the Doce River, from the Fundão dam to its mouth. SRK has now been asked to support Renova in demonstrating the effectiveness of recovery actions on water quality, in all the watercourses impacted by tailings for the environmental agencies and public prosecutors.

The Renova Foundation, a non-profit entity, is subsidised by Vale S/A and BHP Billiton. SRK has reviewed tailings management studies, surface water monitoring, hydrology and hydraulics, ecotoxicity, environmental risk and geochemistry, as well as developing site-specific tools to improve reclaiming and reporting efficiency. 

Among SRK Brazil’s ongoing projects for Renova is a hydrology/hydraulic model that aims to increase the precision of previous work by another company on classifying impacted areas along the Doce River. The original classification was conservative. Now that support is being planned for the impacted population, there is a need to be sure of who was truly impacted and who was not. The main goal of this work is to support the environmental agency as it implements an effective support program.

Other ongoing work is the quality assurance and quality control and compilation of a comprehensive database for soil, sediments and tailings laboratory results. Many different companies are undertaking characterisation studies for Renova. SRK is supporting Renova with integrating good quality data into a unified database. This will facilitate long-term tracking of progress and interpretation of data to determine the future focus of recovery efforts.