A Senate select committee held its first hearings this week to investigate Braskem, Latin America’s largest petrochemical company, whose abusive salt mining practices led to Brazil’s largest urban environmental disaster in history. Experts estimate that more than 60,000 people have been forced to leave their homes and businesses in the northeastern city of Maceió since 2018.
As The Brazilian Report showed in an award-winning in-depth investigation in 2021, Braskem’s salt mining destabilized the subterranean caves underneath neighborhoods in Maceió, leading to the collapse of homes and even large apartment buildings.
The impact of the disaster is clearly visible in a recent geospatial map produced by IBGE, the agency in charge of Brazil’s census. The map shows a significant portion of Maceió covered in red dots, indicating points with power lines where nonetheless, no one lives anymore.
José Geraldo Marques, a former pollution control secretary for Maceió, told senators that cracks in houses in the affected neighborhoods were observed as early as 2008 — but warning bells were completely ignored. Mr. Marques spoke of receiving threats on his life after he raised red flags about the side effects of salt mining in the region.
“Some areas of the city will have to live with cracks and tremors for the next ten years or so before the ground becomes stable,” he told the select committee.
Abel Galindo, a retired...
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