BHP vows to rebuild towns hit by disaster in Brazil

BHP boss Andrew Mackenzie has promised to “do the right thing for the people and the ­environment’’.

Farmer Jose Pascual walks through a devastated area in Paracatu de Baixo village.

BHP Billiton chief executive Andrew Mackenzie has marked the anniversary of last year’s Sam­arco iron ore tailings disaster in Brazil that killed 19 people by promising an unwavering ­commitment to “do the right thing for the people and the ­environment’’.

He made clear that the rebuilding of new towns to replace those swamped by the tsunami of tailings that hurtled down the river system below the failed dam, and the clean-up of the river system, would take years.

Mr Mackenzie also renewed BHP’s interest in the Samarco operation — it is a 50/50 joint venture with Brazil’s Vale — being restarted because of its importance to the local economy and the thousands of jobs involved. The mine was one of the most profitable iron ore operations in the world before the Nov­ember 5 collapse. Mr Mackenzie repeated that it could be restarted only once required approvals were received, and when it was safe to do so.

In August a report by an expert panel in to the collapse of the dam, which had been assembled by BHP, Vale and Samarco (the mine operator), found that the dam failed because of a liquefaction event.

In doing so, it listed a series of shortcomings and incidents at the dam stretching back to 2009, but it was not in the panel’s remit to apportion blame. The man in charge of BHP’s response, Dean Dalle Valle, said at the release of the report that there was no reason to believe anyone at BHP had any information that indicated that the Fundao dam was in danger of collapsing.

“When you have a significant event like this, you need to use it to always continue to improve, to get better, and I think we’re doing that,’’ Mr Dalle Valle said.

Yesterday Mr Mackenzie confirmed that BHP was creating a new global tailings dam standard for its operations, and the report was being shared with the global industry.

There are about 3500 tailings dams around the world.

“I am determined that the experience and knowledge gained will be used to improve the safety of tailings dams globally through greater use of the world’s best science and engineering. We will use this to lift the performance of our own operations,’’ Mr Mac­kenzie said.

He said the Samarco partners were one year in to a three-year program to relocate commun­ities devastated by the dam’s collapse, after which more than 30 million tonnes of tailings surged across two states to end up 600km away in the Atlantic.

Mr Mackenzie said remedi­ation of the river system is expected to take three to five years of intensive work, followed by several years of natural recovery and monitoring. Tests indicated that the tailings are non-toxic.

Last month, eight current and former BHP employees were among 21 people charged with qualified homicide over the disaster. BHP has said it “rejects outright the charges against the company and the affected individuals. We will defend the charges against the company, and fully support each of the affected individuals in their defence of the charges against them.’’