Paraopeba River continues with waters polluted by mud from Vale – 01/24/2024 – Environment

Ediléia Aparecida de Oliveira, 45, had the Paraopeba River as the source of her family’s livelihood. Fisherman, daughter of fishermen and now with five fishermen children, she saw her family’s tradition put at risk with the collapse of the Vale dam in Brumadinho (MG), five years ago, on January 25, 2019.

The fisherman lives in Abaeté, in the central region of Minas Gerais, one of the 26 municipalities under the influence of Paraopeba considered officially impacted by the collapse of the mining company’s dam.

Ediléia continues to climb into her boat to continue her work, but her eyes widen when she tells what she saw in the middle of the river. “The fish, even alive, is stinking,” she says.

Ediléia’s family — her husband is also a fisherman — earned R$3,000 a month from fishing before the dam collapsed. “Today it doesn’t reach R$600”, she reports.

A state government ordinance published on February 28, 2019, in force to this day, recommends that water from the Paraopeba River not be used for any purpose — human, animal, fishing, irrigation or bathing.

Vale, in turn, states that more than 6.7 million results indicate that the quality of Paraopeba’s waters today is similar to that seen before the rupture, “especially in dry periods”.

The company also says, in a note, that the closed plan for the recovery of the Paraopeba basin foresees an investment “in an estimated value of R$5 billion”, funded by the mining company, and with monitoring by competent bodies and environmental audits.

According to the fisherman, with the problems that the fish appear to have, the buyers of the product in the region for resale, the so-called “fishmongers”, have disappeared. “If they want it, it’s for a very low price,” she says.

A survey carried out by the Guaicuy Institute, one of the technical consultancies responsible for monitoring the impacts of the Brumadinho dam collapse on the environment, identified heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury in fish at points even further downstream, in Felixlândia (MG) , also in the central region of the state, 223 km from Brumadinho.

The institute is responsible for monitoring post-tragedy environmental conditions in the region furthest from Brumadinho, in the lower Paraopeba, where the watercourse meets the Três Marias dam.

In addition to Abaeté and Felixlândia, municipalities such as Curvelo and Pompéu are also in this region.

According to the survey, which was based on samples of 1,605 fish, up to 56% of the specimens, depending on the region, tested positive for heavy metals at rates higher than those permitted for human ingestion.

Among the fish analyzed were species commonly used for human consumption such as traíra and piau. The survey was completed by the Guaicuy Institute in 2022, but to this day residents, fishermen and fishmongers are not sure how to proceed.

“What we hear most from the population is ‘can I fish?’, ‘can I eat fish’?, ‘can I swim in the river?'”, says the director of the Guaicuy institute, Marcus Vinícius Polignano, who participated in a meeting with those affected in this Wednesday (24) in Belo Horizonte, where fisherwoman Ediléia was also present.

“There is a lack of information for the population”, adds the director.

Polignano states that other surveys could have been carried out by the institute in recent years, but resources were cut for technical consultancies that work directly with those affected.

Semad (Secretariat for the Environment and Sustainable Development of Minas Gerais), responsible for Igam (Instituto Mineiro das Águas), states that the recommendation published on February 28, 2019 not to use raw water from Paraopeba for any purpose remains in force. as a preventive measure.

The recommendation applies to the entire course of the river between Brumadinho and the Retiro Baixo hydroelectric plant, north of Pompéu, close to the Três Marias dam, a municipality that is 60 km west of the city of Abaeté, owned by the fisherwoman Ediléia. The two municipalities share a border.

The ministry also says that it carries out monthly emergency monitoring at 14 points in the Paraopeba basin.