Army cedes area for railway in return – 12/10/2023 – Power
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The Army Command accepted a request from the company Rumo Logística to provide space in a military area in Mato Grosso for the passage of a railway line in exchange for compensation, such as the construction of a house for a general and a photovoltaic plant.
The railway will be more than 700 km long and will connect Rondonópolis station to Cuiabá and Lucas do Rio Verde, cities in Mato Grosso. With this arm, it will be possible to connect the northern region of the state, with high agricultural production, to the port of Santos (SP) by rail.
The railway route, however, passes within the Army’s military area in the municipality of Rondonópolis. The site is 17 km² and is used by the Army’s 18th Field Artillery Group for training in firing cannons and howitzers — shots that reach up to 21 km away.
The space requested by Rumo, a Cosan group company, is around 540 thousand m². The route enters the military area in two sections at one end of the land, as shown by documents obtained by Sheet.
Military technicians valued the space at R$16.5 million. In agreement with the Army commander, General Tomás Paiva, the Force denied a proposal from Rumo to hand over new land for military training and decided to present a counterpart.
According to the proposal, Rumo must carry out the following works or improvements:
- Construction of a block of 12 apartments, with three floors, in Vila Militar Perimetral, in Cuiabá. Each apartment will have 131.70 m² of floor space, with three bedrooms, living room, laundry area and balcony
- Construction of a house for the chief general of the 13th Motorized Infantry Brigade. It will be built on 5,800 m² of land, with 582 m² of covered area — a residence valued at R$2.2 million. The house project, to which the Sheet had access, includes three suites, living and TV room, swimming pool and gourmet area with barbecue.
- Construction of a house for the senior officer chief of staff of the 13th Motorized Infantry Brigade. Property valued at R$ 850 thousand, with land measuring 692 m² and covered area of 299 m². According to the project, the house must have two suites, an office, living and TV rooms and a gourmet area.
- Adequacy of the electrical network of the battery pavilions of the 18th Field Artillery Group, in Rondonópolis. Work involves replacing all medium and low voltage conductors and installing four new transformers in overhead substations.
- Construction of a photovoltaic plant in Campo Grande (MS), with a grounding system and protection against atmospheric discharges. Set of solar panels must generate 500 kWp.
In an internal opinion, Major Mateus Tonini stated that the construction of the railway on part of the military land would bring “obvious harm to the instruction and training” of the military unit.
Tonini, however, assessed that it is possible to keep the Army’s artillery training and the railway in operation if “specific security, coordination and control measures are established, which guarantee the lowest possible degree of risk for both activities”.
In a statement, the Army said that it carried out “negotiations to adjust the route so that it did not compromise the military use of the land, and the compensation proposals were discussed in several meetings with the aforementioned company, culminating in the acceptance of both parties when of signing the contract”.
The Force added that it concluded the space assignment agreement, with the counterparts, in order to meet the “principles of legality, economy, efficiency, supremacy of the public interest, motivation and reasonableness and based on increased effectiveness in the management of public assets and in asset and sustainable restructuring”.
Rumo stated, in a note, that the “required area solely and exclusively includes the space necessary for the implementation of the railway, considering its project and the established right-of-way.” “The company continues to negotiate with the Army.”
The route of the Senador Vicente Emílio Vuolo State Railway, in addition to crossing a military area, will separate two Indigenous Lands occupied by the Boe Bororo people.
The Tadarimana Indigenous Land is about 10 km to the right of the railway line, according to the projects presented by Rumo to the authorities. The Tereza Cristina Indigenous Land is further away, on the left.
There is, however, a divergence between the distances calculated by federal agencies. In the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government, Ibama (Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) said that the Tadarimana territory was 10.1 km from the railway, while Iphan (Institute of Historical and Cultural Heritage) calculates a distance of 9.9 km.
The numbers are relevant because an interministerial ordinance defines that, in the Legal Amazon, to build railways up to 10 km from indigenous lands, companies and public bodies need to listen to the people affected by the project, as a way of mitigating problems related to construction.
Due to the measurements that stipulate a distance greater than 10 km, Funai (National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples) sent a letter to Rumo, in 2021, informing that the company would not need to comply with specific procedures related to indigenous people.
“Even with this doubt about the exact distance, it is clear to us that there is gigantic damage [ao povo indígena] because Boe Bororo culture is especially a culture that revolves around funeral ritual. When one of Tereza Cristina’s Bororo dies, everyone migrates there and spends one or two months in their own rituals. If this train passes through the middle of sister lands, there could be some impact on this relationship,” he told Sheet public defender Renan Sotto Mayor, responsible for contact with indigenous people.
With Funai’s approval, Rumo obtained the first licenses and moved forward with the construction of parts of the railway without consulting the Boe Bororo or negotiating compensation.
The bureaucratic processes were only interrupted in August 2022, when federal judge Pedro Maradei Neto suspended the granting of environmental licenses for the railway until the Government of Mato Grosso negotiated with the Boe Bororo people.
In November 2022, Rumo reached an agreement with the Federal Public Ministry, the DPU (Federal Public Defender’s Office) and the Mato Grosso Environment Secretariat. The document stipulates that the company will pay for the hiring of specialized consultancy for the state government to carry out consultations with the indigenous community.
In a statement, Rumo said that it is in “continuous dialogue” with the bodies responsible for discussing the indigenous issue.
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