We need to talk about Mariana
There’s a lot going on the world right now, but what’s going on in Brazil can’t be ignored. I’ve decided on doing this post when I noticed many of my friends from other countries didn’t know what was happening and came to ask me. So here’s some information.
There’s an area in Brazil very well know for it’s mining purposes… and historical cities. And maybe anywhere else people would have thought it’s a bad idea to mix the both of them, but shit happens, and it happened. Last week, one of the barriers that held back the mud from one of those mining areas ( so mud mixed with iron residues) broke, and we lost a city.
Yes, a city. And a river.
Check the before and after pictures bellow (from here):
This was mud enough to fill 20 THOUSAND Olympic pools. You read that right. The city above (Bento Rodrigues) is literally covered in twenty thousand olympic pools of mud.
But that’s not all. The river that crossed the city is not only dead bellow all the dirt (thousands of fish appeared dead, there were about 80 species on the river), but it’s taking part of it 500km away, until our very littoral. Yes, everyone, we might have just managed to get a bunch of mud to the Atlantic Ocean and damage marine life too. It’s going towards Espirito Santo, and their littoral happens to be the place where an engendered species of turtles reproduce, exactly in November. Besides, now some people also don’t have water cause, ya know, can’t take water easily from a river that doesn’t exists anymore.
“But it’s mud, right? The ambient will recover from this soon”
Nope. It’s not just dirt, it’s dirt poor of nutrients and mixed with potentially toxic residues. The mining company (Samarco, owned partially by Vale) states that there aren’t toxic metals in the mud, but another test showed mercury in the water contaminated around the city. And even if there aren’t toxins, experts are saying nothing will grow on top of it for a long while.
“How did any of it happen though??”
Nobody is sure yet. While it might have to do with seismic activity, it could have been negligence and some people are saying the barriers weren’t on their best for years (although they were verified not so long ago).
So far, 11 deaths were confirmed and some other 20 people are missing. It’s been hard to confirm the actual losses, for obvious reasons.
But if you thought the situation was bad enough, consider this: another barrier is threatening to break close by.
Here’s links to the sources of all this, I could only find them in Portuguese: x x x x x.
We need to talk about Mariana. We need the world to know.
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