In 2015, a mine tailings dam failed near the town of Bento Rodrigues, in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. The collapse spilled about 40 million cubic meters of iron ore mining waste into the landscape, burying villages under mud, killing 19 people and polluting thousands of streams along the River Doce.
One year ago, a Brazilian federal court acquitted the mine’s parent companies, Vale in Brazil and BHP in Australia, of criminal charges, three weeks after they announced a $30 billion settlement with Brazil’s government to pay for damages.
But a High Court in the United Kingdom ruled on Friday that BHP is liable for the dam collapse under Brazil’s environmental and civil law and could be on the hook to pay even more.
“For us it represents a very important milestone,” Mônica dos Santos, a resident of Bento Rodrigues who lost her home and her friends in the Nov. 5, 2015 disaster, said in a video message. It’s about “holding BHP accountable for the crime that occurred” on Nov. 5.
In a statement to Inside Climate News, the president of BHP Americas, Brandon Craig, said that the company intends to appeal the court’s decision and that Brazil is the more appropriate venue through which to provide remediation. He said the payouts already made through the settlement agreement there should reduce the more than 600,000 claimants in the U.K. case by half.
“The court has upheld releases provided in Brazil and 240,000 claimants in the U.K. group action who have already been paid compensation in Brazil have signed full releases,” said Craig.
The British law firm Pogust Goodhead filed the case on behalf of about 620,000 claimants, including individuals, businesses and municipalities seeking up to $47 billion in damages. The case claimed that BHP, a 50 percent owner of the mine’s operator Samarco, was negligent in funding the mine’s expansion even though it knew the Fundão dam was at risk of collapse. They brought the case in the U.K. because one of BHP’s legal entities was registered there at the time.
Caroline Narvaez Leite, legal director at Pogust Goodhead, said that some claimants who had received money from settlements in Brazil may not have waived rights for all of the damages they suffered and that compensation under the lawsuit would have to be assessed on a case by case basis. A trial to assess the damages is scheduled for October.
In a 233-page decision on Friday, Judge Fiona O’Farrell ruled that “the risk of collapse of the dam was foreseeable” and that it was “imprudent” of BHP to continue to raise the dam given the “obvious signs of contractive, saturated tailings and numerous incidents of seepage and cracking.” She wrote that the company was responsible even though it did not directly own and operate the dam.
Leite, said the decision was groundbreaking because it marked the first time that one of the companies has been considered liable since the disaster occurred 10 years ago.
“BHP was considered strictly liable as a polluter under Brazilian environmental law, but also based on fault, on their own fault due to their negligence in relation to the collapse,” said Leite. “What we’re trying to do is get full compensation and make sure that everyone who suffered losses is going to be repaired or compensated for the specific losses that they have.”
The High Court ruling comes as delegates from around the world have gathered in Belém, Brazil, for COP30, the United Nations’ annual climate talks, where nations will spend two weeks negotiating a global plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has championed environmental causes and made strides in reducing deforestation in the Amazon by 50 percent. He has also been criticized for his support of extractive industries, including approving oil drilling this summer at the mouth of the Amazon River.
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Edson Krenak, one of the Indigenous activists from Brazil attending the conference, said his people, the Krenak, continue to be affected by the contamination of the Doce River, which they call the Watu.
“We lost the traditional places our families used to visit, for rituals, for prayers along the river,” he said. “These places are no longer safe. … We still receive water from trucks, we still cannot safely plant our crops and have our animals drink from that water.”
He said that the regulation of mine tailings continues to be a major concern in Brazil, and that he regularly receives reports about negligent management practices from communities around the country.
“Tailings in Brazil are not safe. They are not any safer than they were 10 years ago; they are still the same,” said Krenak. “The regulators, the legislature are not catching up with the industry to hold them accountable and responsible for proper, safe closures.”
He said that he had been to two events at COP30 about mining standards hosted by industry and the U.N. that did not allow for audience questions, including one today where the Mariana disaster and the U.K. ruling did not come up.
“I’m shocked by the silence,” he said. “No one’s really talking about that.”
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Blanca Begert
Reporter, California
Blanca Begert covers climate change and the environment in California. She previously reported on state climate policy and politics as the California climate and energy reporter at Politico. Before that, she was a fellow at Grist and an award-winning editor and video producer at PBS SoCal. She has a master’s degree in Environmental Science from the Yale School of the Environment, where she focused on forest management, conservation, and international climate policy. Her reporting has taken her across the United States, Latin America, and China. Blanca lives in Los Angeles and is originally from Miami, Florida.
