Brazilian environmental authority rejects SAM’s iron ore project

Brazil’s environmental authority, Ibama, has rejected an iron ore project from Sul-Americana Metais (SAM), which was expected to have Brazil’s largest iron ore waste dam, Ibama said.

The Brazilian authority refused the project for finding it be environmentally unfeasible. 

SAM’s iron ore complex would be located in the cities of Padre Carvalho and Grao Mogol, both in the state of Minas Gerais. The complex was expected to have Brazil’s largest iron ore waste dam. It would have an iron ore mine, a concentration unit and an iron ore pipe of 482 km (299 miles) connected to a port in Ilheus, in the state of Bahia.

SAM said iron ore production at the mine was expected to reach 25 million mt/year. Called Vale do Rio Pardo, the project would be online by the end of 2018 or early 2019.

“The negative impacts and the environmental risks to which neighboring communities and the environment could be exposed to don’t allow [us] … to attest the environmental feasibility of the project,” Ibama said in its decision.

Ibama’s decision follows a recent iron ore waste dam burst late last year at local pellets producer Samarco, a 50/50 joint venture between Brazil’s Vale and BHP Billiton, which killed 19 people and let hundreds homeless.

Concerns over the impacts of the project to water resources and the quality of the air, which demanded “complex mitigation measures,” were also raised by Ibama.

SAM’s iron ore project was expected to have three iron ore waste dams. The largest dam would have a 1.3 billion-cubic-meter capacity.

Brazil’s largest dam is currently located in the state of Minas Gerais has a 750-million-cubic-meter capacity.
 
Ibama clarified it didn’t discuss or look at the dam’s security, which is a duty of the nation’s mining agency, DNPM. “The impacted area by the large volume of [iron ore] waste made the project not viable,” it explained.