THE Brumadinho dam disaster, Brazil’s second in four years, would harm risk appetite in the world’s mining sector and further tarnish its image, said Reuters.
Brazilian rescue workers have been searching for roughly 300 people missing after a tailings dam burst at a Vale iron ore mine in the town of Brumadinho in Minas Gerais state. Ten bodies have been recovered.
Brazil is still reeling from the 2015 collapse of a larger dam, owned by the Samarco Mineracao SA joint venture between Vale and BHP that killed 19 people in the South American nation’s worst environmental disaster, said Reuters.
One investor at a major bank, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters he could no longer consider investing in Vale or BHP because of the ongoing risk of Samarco liability.
“It goes without saying that we still have lessons to learn from this disaster, and we will need to do everything we can to incorporate those lessons across the industry,” said International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) CEO, Tom Butler.
Vale is a member of the ICMM. Following the Samarco dam burst, the ICMM issued updated guidelines its members must should follow to try to safeguard tailings dams used to store waste left over from mining operations.
