Brazil’s Vale to spend $400 million in 2022 to remove tailings dams

(Reuters) – Brazilian miner Vale SA expects to spend $400 million in 2022 to decommission its tailings dams, aiming to have 12 of its 30 buildings eradicated by the top of the 12 months, the corporate instructed Reuters on Tuesday.

The dam elimination program, which started 4 years in the past, has already value the corporate $857 million of the $4 billion it tasks to spend by 2035 in an effort to remove current buildings that might trigger disasters like these in Brumadinho and Mariana, in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state.

Tailings dams are buildings that include mining waste. The breach of 1 in Brumadinho in 2019 killed 270 folks and resulted in a wave of mining tailings impacting the area.

Up to now, seven buildings have been eradicated, 4 in Minas Gerais and three in Para state. By the top of the 12 months, one other 5 in Minas Gerais will probably be decommissioned, in response to the corporate.

The 12 dams Vale expects to remove by December symbolize a complete quantity of 46.9 million cubic meters of tailings.

(Reporting by Rafaella Barros; Writing by Peter Frontini; Enhancing by Invoice Berkrot)