Vale Receives Notice from SEC Ahead of Potential Probe

Author/Contact Lindsay Newland Bowker compiler@worldminetailingsfailures.org

DATE: October29,2021

RE:https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/brazils-vale-receives-notice-us-sec-ahead-potential-probe-2021-10-28/

The recently released Brazil Prosecutors cause of failure report http://www.mpf.mp.br/mg/sala-de-imprensa/docs/2021/relatorio-final-cinme-upc-1) co authored by top experts on liquefaction has a bearing on the potential SEC probe.

The narrative the SEC is acting on is the narrative pushed by the Wall Street Journal and NGO’s mostly out of a misunderstanding of the documents in the Brazil Prosecutors records.  Principally, the WSJ reporters and the NGO’s didn’t understand that an extreme or high hazard potential is not the same as an extreme or high actual risk.

The dam’s extreme fragility was recognized and the work underway which, according to the new report by Gens and Arroyo, triggered the failure, was part of a stabilizng program that had already achieved small but measurable effects.  It was not work undertaken with disregard for the risks of undertaking it.

Nonetheless, the SEC probe is an important step towards laying out what needs to be addressed so that the industry, with support from licensing Governments , investors and insurers, has room to reconfigure itself to better knowledge and better practice on TSF stability and to de risk what cannot be left as is.

Tractebel was fired by Washington Pirete for refusing to certify TSF stability. Pirete,  was primary promoter and guardian of Vale’s wrong approach to dam stability assessment and statutorily mandated reporting,  Pimenta de Avila before Tractebel had questioned Vale’s geotechnical protocols.  Scott Olson as consultant had already told Vale that their Pirete based geotechnical program was an incorrect application of their methodology(based on Olson 2001) resulting in false conclusions. 

That was all reaffirmed by Vale’s own in- house cause of failure report by one of the top geotechnical teams in the world. 

Vale responded by stopping all depositions at the TSF and was engaged in a multi -year effort to de water and stabilize the facility for a planned major re mining of it.

Could the application of better stability analysis protocols such as those used in the Brazil Prosecutors recently released cause of failure report  provided a better basis for decision making on what stabilizing procedures were safe to undertake?

 Maybe, yes. That is a question for Gens and Arroyo.

Without question, a finite element run may have definitively identified the dam as hovering on the very edge of failure despite the small signs of progress. Use of finite element analysis as used by Gens and Arroyo after the fact,  may have resulted in a shift to first  make down stream communities and the hundreds of employees using the administrative building safe before proceeding with further de risking, further stabilization.

Many, many active and abandoned TSF’s all over the world with poor hydraulics are recurringly re-saturated and reside in a vulnerable state of saturation with extreme susceptibility to flow failure until the saturation slowly dissipates.  During that time of extreme saturation a very small change exerting very minor stresses or vibrations can set off a flow failure as happened at Brumadinho.

According to the Brazil Prosecutor report by renowned liquefaction experts Gens and Arroyo, the measures Vale was undertaking under TUV SUD’s direction urging extreme caution were beginning to move toward an improved stability condition. 

 It was just too late.

To move past this present world portfolio wide crisis of too may old upstream dams with poor hydraulics we don’t need law suits we need solutions..workable strategies for managing TSFs which become super saturated We need tools, data and strategies for recognizing when its important to shift to accelerated downstream protections and when it is safe and in what form de risking can be initiated. 

Vale is middle of the pack per the Responsible Mining Foundation’s score on responsible mining practices. That is the reality we must all come around to working on together.

Burning Vale at the stake as some sort of aberrant lone bad actor is not going to make the world portfolio of TSF’s any safer and it’s not going to protect those host communities now downstream from dozens of equally vulnerable large dams world wide  in a state as vulnerable as Brumadinho was.

The “Global Standard” made a huge huge mistake in not making  identification of existing at risk dams and their de-risking a top prioritiy.  

There is no such thing as recovery from a catastrophic TSF failure lacking downstream protections , diversions and berms.

No amount of money can make a TSF failure inundated area “clean” for viable life-supporting future use.

We can though afford loss prevention but parking it all at the door of mine operators is not the answer.

Present risk was co-created by investors, insurers, lenders, and most of all governments who chose revenue and jobs over host community security and are still making that choice every day..look at Zelazny Most .  Look at Kumtor. Look at the Philippines.

Lindsay Newland Bowker, Executive Director

World Mine Tailings  Failures

compiler@WorldMineTailingsFailures.org

+1 207 367 5145

www.worldminetailingsfailures.org