The Mariana tragedy could have been avoided with USD 1.5 million

On November 5, the collapse of an iron rod dam spilled the equivalent of 25,000 Olympic-sized pools of mud. It’s Brazil’s worst environmental disaster ever: it resulted in the death of 19 people, left a trail of destruction across neighboring villages, devastated the Rio Doce, and polluted the Atlantic Ocean. All of this could have been avoided if Samarco, the mining company responsible for the dam, had spent a mere USD 1.5 million on safety measures.

In 2009, the company refused to implement an emergency plan to monitor safety at the Fundão Dam. The money would have been used to install a telemetric system to identify structural risks, and would have allowed the company to develop a contingency plan to rescue neighboring communities in case of an accident. That’s what Randal Fonseca, owner of RTI Consulting, told me (Fonseca is also the author of an emergency plan that Samarco declined to implement).

This set of safety measures would have provided the mining company with structural reports every second, and also included training and preparation for employees and people who lived next to the dam in case of a possible accident. Following international standards, the plan would also diagnose secondary events triggered by a structure collapse – including the repercussions on social media.

“A dam is always at risk – it contains fluids that will try to ‘escape’ from it. That’s why it is necessary to be prepared for the worst at all times,” explains Fonseca. The consultant says that he was contacted by Samarco after an independent audit considered the company’s emergency plan “a joke,” as Fonseca describes it.

But Samarco’s...