This time its much worse Hundreds Dead Hundreds Injured & Missing Environmental Disaster of Epic Magnitude Vale Has Suspended Dividends Suspended Executive Bonuses 4 New Downgrades 38.50% Insider Owned 20.40% Institutional Owned 10% of the Total Shares Outstanding Have Rolled Over by Lunch Today, 56M Shares Traded out of 5.7B Outstanding...ohhhh yea baby!
I'm getting SHORT as fuck! Vale could drop as low as 2016 levels around the $2 mark! Excellent short opportunity! Loading up on Puts! Getting Short as Fuck! Loading up on Puts! Getting Short as Fuck! Loading up on Puts! Getting Short as Fuck! Loading up on Puts! Getting Short as Fuck! Loading up on Puts! Getting Short as Fuck! Loading up on Puts! Getting Short as Fuck! Loading up on Puts! Getting Short as Fuck! Loading up on Puts! Getting Short as Fuck! Loading up on Puts! Getting Short as Fuck! Loading up on Puts! Getting Short as Fuck! Loading up on Puts! Getting Short as Fuck! Loading up on Puts! Getting Short as Fuck! Loading up on Puts! Getting Short as Fuck!
!!!See you guys at the bottom!!!
Bento Rodrigues Dam Disaster The Bento Rodrigues dam disaster occurred on 5 November 2015, when an iron ore tailings dam in Mariana, Minas Gerais, Brazil, suffered a catastrophic failure, resulting in flooding that destroyed the village of Bento Rodrigues and killed 19 people. The failure of the Bento Rodrigues dam has been described as the worst environmental disaster in Brazil's history. Around 60 million cubic meters of iron waste flowed into the Doce River, causing toxic brown mudflows to pollute the river and beaches near the mouth when they reached the Atlantic Ocean 17 days later. The disaster sparked a humanitarian crisis as hundreds were displaced and cities along the Doce River suffered water shortages. The total impact of the disaster, including the reason for failure and the environmental consequences, are officially under investigation and currently still unclear. The owner of the Bento Rodrigues dam, Samarco, was subject to extensive litigation and government sanctions. In 2016, charges of homicide were filed against 21 executives of Vale and BHP Billiton, the companies that own Samarco as a joint venture. Controversy over the investigation grew after a 2013 report, indicating structural issues in the dam, was leaked.
Background The Fundão and Santarém tailings dams were constructed and owned by Samarco Mineração SA, a mining company, in Mariana, a municipality 67 kilometers (42 mi) south-east of Belo Horizonte, in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The tailings dams were built by Samarco to accommodate the waste resulting from the extraction of iron ore taken from extensive Germano mine, located in the Mariana district of Santa Rita Durão. The Fundão dam was constructed in the hills near the village and subdistrict of Bento Rodrigues, located 14 kilometers (8.7 mi) north of Mariana city.
Incident At approximately 3:30pm on 5 November 2015, the Fundão dam presented a leak. Immediately, a team of outsourced employees was sent to the scene, and they tried to mitigate the leak by deflating part of the reservoir. At around 4:20pm, a rupture occurred, releasing a large volume of toxic sludge into the Santarém river valley. Bento Rodrigues, which lies 2.5 kilometers (1.6 mi) away in the valley below the dam, was almost entirely flooded by the cascade of toxic water and mud. Other villages and districts in the Gualaxo river valley, also in the region of Mariana, suffered minor damage. Bento Rodrigues is only accessible by unpaved back roads. The incident rendered Bento Rodrigues completely inaccessible by road, hindering firefighters' rescue efforts. The only available method of transport into or out of the location was via helicopter. There was a school in the area where the flood occurred, and the teachers were able to remove the students before school. Samarco and the neighboring communities did not have a contingency plan or evacuation routes in the event of dam failure. Had such plans existed, residents may have been able to evacuate in a timely manner to more secure regions. Around 600 people were evacuated to Mariana, and troops of the Brazilian Armed Forces were deployed to assist.
Impact Satellite images of Bento Rodrigues and the Germano mine before and after the disaster, displaying the flooding and pollution of the Doce River. An abandoned car caught in the mudslide amidst the ruins of Bento Rodrigues. Satellite image of the mouth of the Doce River in Linhares, Espírito Santo, when tailings reached the southern Atlantic Ocean. According to a United Nations report, the tailing slurry traveled 620 km downriver, eventually reaching the Atlantic Ocean. Nineteen people were killed, "Entire fish populations – at least 11 tons – were killed immediately when the slurry buried them or clogged their gills", and "the force of the mudflow destroyed 1 469 hectares of riparian forest."
Contamination of Rio Doce At around 6:30pm on the day of 5 November, the tailings of iron ore reached the Rio Doce. The river basin has a drainage area of about 86,715 square kilometers, with 86% in Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo. In total, the river covers 230 municipalities that use its bed for subsistence. According to biologist and ecologist Andrew Ruschi, who studies marine biology at the Estação Biologia Marinha Augusto Ruschi in Santa Cruz, Espírito Santo, the waste will take at least decades to dilute to levels anywhere near previous levels. The waste also reached the hydroelectric power plant of Risoleta Neves in Santa Cruz do Escalvado within 100 kilometers of Mariana. According to the company that runs the power plant, its functioning has not been affected. On 9 November, the city of Governador Valadares stopped the water intakes due to the mud on the Rio Doce. The next day, a State of Public Calamity was decreed in response to the water shortage in the city. According to analyses carried out in the city, the mud contains greater than acceptable concentrations of heavy metals, substances harmful to health, such as arsenic, lead and mercury. There are concerns about contamination of the nearby Rio Gualaxo do Norte [pt], a tributary of the Doce River, due to the toxic substances stored at the facility.
Contamination of southern Atlantic ocean On 22 November, the waste reached the Atlantic Ocean.[13] The toxic mud is spreading across the Espírito Santo coast, where cities closed down access to beaches. On 7 January 2016, the waste reached the southern Bahia littoral zone. Environmentalists who are monitoring the impact to the Abrolhos Marine National Park wildlife. The park is considered of vital importance to the Brazilian ecosystem since it hosts the greatest marine biodiversity in the whole southern Atlantic ocean.
Aftermath & Investigation of the causes On the first quarter of November 2015, the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies and the state chambers of Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo each created a special commission to follow the case, and the actions taken. According to the press, many of the deputies that composed such commissions had received donations from Vale to finance their campaigns. Such donations, summing up to R$2.6 million are legal, and were reported by the then-candidates to the Brazilian Election Justice. However, critics argued that the deputies' participation was clearly biased. In January 2016, the leaking of internal documents from 14 months before the disaster revealed that Samarco had been warned about the possibility of the dam collapses. Joaquim Pimenta de Ávila, an engineer who was regarded as one of the foremost tailing dam engineers in Brazil, had been contracted by Samarco between 2008 and 2012 to design and oversee the construction of the Fundão dam. From 2013, Ávila was hired part-time as a consultant to inspect the dam, and a technical report he wrote from September 2014 lists severe structural problems on the dam (in the form of cracks) and measures to mitigate them, the main one being the construction of a buttress. Samarco claimed to have implemented all the recommendations from Ávila, and that the dam was in the process of being heightened when the landfill reached its maximum holding capacity and began to leak. However, Samarco failed to comment specifically about the buttress, and claims that it was never warned about the severity of the structural damages, nor about the imminence of a catastrophic failure.
Sanctions to Samarco Samarco president Ricardo Vescovi & The Minas Gerais government suspended Samarco's activities immediately after the disaster. Next, the Brazilian government fined Samarco R$250 million (USD66.3million) for the incident. The fine was preliminary and was expected to be increased if the two companies were found guilty of water pollution and damages. In January 2016, the Brazilian government and Samarco reached an agreement and a fine of R$20 billion (USD$4.8 billion) was issued. The penalty did not include compensation to people affected by the disaster, and the cost of recovering the polluted area. By July 2016, BHP had provisioned USD$2.3-2.5 billion for costs associated with the compensation deal being struck between Samarco's shareholders (BHP and Vale) and Brazilian federal, state and municipal authorities.
Legal consequences Vale and BHP Billiton own Samarco as a joint venture, with each company possessing a 50% stake. As of 2018, these companies remain in negotiations with Brazilian authorities in efforts to settle out of court. In March 2016, Samarco agreed to pay USD$2.3 billion in compensation. Australia's ABC reported that Samarco and its joint venture partners would "establish a foundation to develop and execute environmental and socio-economic programs to restore the environment, local communities and social conditions of the affected areas." In June 2016, an AUD$8 billion civil suit which was reinstated by Brazil's Superior Court after the original agreement was suspended. BHP, along with its Samarco joint venture partner Vale, face a separate $58 billion suit lodged by federal prosecutors. In October 2016 it was reported that Brazilian prosecutors had filed manslaughter and environmental charges against 21 people[26] including top executives of Samarco's owners: BHP Billiton, an Anglo-Australian multinational mining, metals and petroleum company headquartered in Melbourne, Australia and the world's largest mining company, and Vale SA, the third-largest mining company in the world and the Public Eye People's Worst Company award winner of 2012. In June 2018, Samarco, Vale and BHP signed a deal to drop a $7 billion lawsuit and allow two years for the companies to address the greater $58 billion suit seeking social, environmental and economic compensation.
Class action suits In August 2018, BHP settled a class action suit in the USA for USD$50 million, with no admission of liability. At the same time, it was facing a class action suit in Australia related to the dam failure and losses incurred by shareholders following company disclosures to the market regarding the safety of the dam. The class action is expected to be one of the largest in Australian history, with 30,000 BHP shareholders involved, with a combined shareholding of 330,000 shares, valued at over AUD$10 billion (as of 5 November 2018). On 5 November 2018, SPG Law, a Liverpool-based law firm, issued a class action against the BHP Group for £5 billion, one of the largest in British legal history.
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