How To Protect The Ocean
SUFB 058: Brazil Dam Collapses Releasing Toxic Mud From Mine's Tailings Pond
A Brazilian dam operated by Samarco, a mining company, collapsed two weeks ago flooding the Doce Basin with toxic mud leaving over 280,000 people without clean water and killing at least 12 people. The government estimates the clean up will take 30 years and cost 1 billion dollars; however, environmentalists say it will cost 27 billion dollars. It's just another reason to make sure extractive industries like mining and oil/gas need to be held to the highest regulatory authority to avoid the horrible events.
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http://www.speakupforblue.com/session58
Welcome to the Speak Up for Blue Podcast session 58 a damn Holding mine tailings has burst in Brazil and toxic mud has spread and all over Brazil And reach the Atlantic Ocean another bad news story on the Speak Up for Blue Podcasts stay tuned Welcome to the Speak Up for Blue Podcast helping you get involved in ocean conservation And now here's your host he still puts his hands in the air because he doesn't care Andrew Lewin Hey everybody welcome back to the Speak Up for Blue podcast your voice for the ocean I am your host Andrew Lewin founder Speak Up for Blue.com marine ecologist and self-proclaimed ocean printer and I Am frustrated. It is Wednesday and the last two days have been bad news coming out of the ocean and today is Another bad news story coming out of the Atlantic Ocean in Brazil. We're a toxic or where a dam has burst Just taking over one of the most important rivers in Brazil and it it's It's just a bit of disaster and it's just frustrating because this is one of those things that is probably preventable We don't know all the details yet, but it's probably Preventable and I'll be honest. I am frustrated at this step on today's episode I didn't want to do this episode because I want to make it a little happier and positive But I'm a little frustrated so I'm gonna rant on today's episode But before I get into the rant I want to talk about some good news something that you can do an action item that you can do Today to help save and protect the ocean. You can go to our online store speak up for blue.com Fords slash shop SHOP and you can buy an item there. We have t-shirts. We have iPhone cases We have travel mugs. We have at-home mugs. They all have different sayings on them all about raising ocean awareness Just like what I'm trying to do through this podcast through Speak Up for Blue.com. I'm trying to do through you You have a chance to help raise ocean awareness by wearing the t-shirts by Using the mugs by using the iPhone cases people will ask you what it's all about and you can tell them You can tell them that it's all about speak up for blue.com. You can tell them that it's all about raising ocean awareness and Tackling these ocean issues and trying to prevent these big issues like a mine Dam bursting and then causing all these toxins to go into the river system Closing off water for 200 towns and villages. You know we can prevent that by raising awareness and Stopping this from happening and I'll tell you how in just a minute But to continue on you can do that you can raise awareness just by purchasing this these items plus when you purchase these items You automatically support any revenue generated after costs from these items will go towards our partner sea turtles Forever the president Mark Ward and I have been getting to know each other over the last three years We're actually partnered and next year in the January 2016 I'm super excited that we're gonna help them out in Projects that can help complete their projects because they are a small organization are built off volunteer ship But they're a small organization with a major impact on conservation. They do really two things among other things But the major things that they do is one They go down to Central America. They work with local communities try and convert a very poaching community into a very Equators in community by protecting Sea turtle nests each will come up on the beach the lay above 300 to 400 eggs Then they go back on the beach those eggs those nests are just there for poachers to grab they sell the eggs They'll use the eggs for food and so forth, but it's not sustainable It's to know not to be sustainable. It's been studying It's just not sustainable because you're taking away sea turtles from going back into the ocean You're having less comeback and providing nests, so you're getting less eggs So it's just eventually these certain sea turtles who are already there's seven species They're already endangered at some sort of level. They're at risk at some sort of level That they're not gonna be around if that continues right if you keep taking away their young It's not gonna continue they're not gonna continue for very long because they have other other major Obstacles to take before they can reach adulthood before they can read reach a reproductive status, right? So What they do is they protect those eggs they protect those nests and they work with the community to convert They're non sustainable poaching business into a more sustainable ecotourism business where everybody benefits including the sea turtle So it's a great thing that they do there the second thing that they do is they've created a tool that that that cleans up Microplastics from beaches and you're probably wondering well who cares you know What are microplastics? What what do we care about them? Well microplastics are found all over the world all over beaches and they're very hard to pick up Have you tried to pick up microplat like have you done a beach cleanup? You can pick up bottles you can pick up shoes you can pick up whatever you like the big items But picking up microplastics will take forever and this tool actually takes it up really easily and so successful that State governments like Oregon New Jersey are actually implementing them. They're putting them into their process for beach cleanups So they're really doing well, but again. This is a small organization They need funding they need help and speak up who wants to do that through our speak up for blue community So every time you buy an item automatically the revenue generated from that item will go towards We'll go towards this organization and usually it's about five bucks. I can tell you that right now It's usually but the revenues usually about five bucks per item, right? So the more you buy the more that you get supported. I know Thanksgiving is coming up I know Christmas is coming up. This is a big push. This is the time to do it. Okay, so that's it for that Let's get back to my rant I'll tell you what happened. There's a mine. That's run by Samarco. It's it's a conglomerate. It's run by three companies So it's it's run by let's see if I can get the name here Samarco BHP Billiton of Australia and Brazil's Vale. They're very big organized They're very big companies and they're obviously done some they have sites all around the world What happened was a damn collapsed and it was on the Specific River. Let's see what river it is. Sorry. I'm gonna just look it up here Choo-choo-choo. Where is it? I? Can't pronounce it. I don't remember the pronunciation It's it's it's it's a river in the doce basin d o c e basin. I'm not sure my Portuguese infrared isn't very good So I think it's the doce basin That that water feeds 200 or supplies clean water to 200 towns and villages Within that basin right now. There's been such a spill and it's been the largest Environmental disasters in the last 30 years. There's been such a spill that those 200 towns have no clean drinking water Their drinking water has been contained because what happened is once that damn Collapse all this toxic mud the tailing ponds which is basically all the waste that goes into these ponds that are supposed to be cleaned up They or eventually will get cleaned up. They actually got spilled out into the river So all that waste that was that was constray in this mud God out into the basin and I put some pictures up on the on the website There's a the photographer Ricardo Moraz Took some amazing pictures where you see the mud coming into the ocean and it's such a major river You actually see the plume the plume is essentially the the area of Freshwater or river water that comes out into the ocean. You actually see the difference and you can see the mud all over that And it's just gross. It's absolutely gross Unfortunately, 12 people are missing and I think they say on top of that 12 people have died But I can't confirm that just from this this this area so In in response the mine consortium laid nine kilometers of floating barriers to try and protect the plants and animals from the mud Which is full of heavy metals in that mud. It's just disgusting The environmental minister says the worst disaster in the country's history and It's estimated that would take 30 years to clean up the doejay basin after the mud smothered thousands of fish turtles and other animals See what I mean how I get frustrated by this stuff this stuff this thing these events that happen can be prevented This is like the BP oil spill in in in the Gulf of Mexico that happened back in 2011 They all could be they were all preventable by just maintenance, but these companies are not held responsible by the government They have they don't have to check in with these maintenance problems or they do But they don't actually do the maintenance and the government doesn't just check up on them Right and it's not necessarily the government's fault in the way it is because they don't they don't regulate properly They don't enforce the regulation, but these companies take zero responsibility You know they try and make it you know like they want to be beneficial But in essence they don't maintain these things and if it was an oversight fine It's an oversight, but now you got to pay the price So that one of the companies I think it was some Marco It's already been find Money totaling four hundred million dollars But the cleanup could cost more than one billion and I'm gonna tell you right now that that one billion is probably the minimum cleanup they need to do the There's an organization that's run by a documentary of a renowned Brazilian documentary photographer Sebastian Salgado Salgado Whose Foundation has been active in efforts to protect the Doce River He said he toured the area and submitted a twenty-seven dollar billion cleanup proposal to the government He said everything died now the river is a sterile canal filled with mud That's what's happened to this beautiful river that supplied 200 towns full of people With clean drinking water and now it's all contaminated with toxic mud But these things are preventable. That's what frustrates me about these things when you have a company That is is exploiting a specific resource. You're extracting a resource You're taking it out by either blasting or when you take it out. There's a lot of chemicals that you're bringing out So you have to properly dispose of those chemicals and you have to make sure that those chemicals don't get back in To the regular water system. There's a reason why they're in ground There's a reason why they're there when you take them out or the chemicals you use to take them out to extract the the minerals that you want You have to it's your responsibility To make sure that you don't impact everything around you and this is why it's so important to have you know a terrestrial plans and marine plans a lot of cities and towns in I know in Canada have Plans we've we've spoken about this. I spoke about this last week on the podcast session 54 speaking for blue dot com slash and sissy session 54 where We talked about how people in the marine area. They don't have marine plans because it's been a bit of a wild wild west It's you extract wherever you need to and we'll just monitor one sector at a time So oil and gas out, you know, wherever you want to lease your land you can lease your land You know extractive mining sand mining and whatnot You can lease your land wherever you want and then all but once it conflicts We don't know what to do because we haven't been you know We didn't do a plan of where everybody can be zoned to do well They have that in cities they have that in towns and municipalities I don't know if they have in Brazil But this is where these plans really come into place they make sure that these extractive companies will have a plan in place that if if an environmental disaster like this happens or Or they have a plan. What is their plan to clean up when BP had their their disaster happen when they spilt all that That oil when they forget they when they didn't maintain those pipelines down below because they didn't know how They should have known how they should have submitted a plan before they even drilled in to get the oil of how they were Gonna go that deep if there was a leak and how they were gonna stop it or how they were gonna maintain it They should have to do it word for like step by step and lay it out and even demonstrate that they can do it Because if they can't they should have no business being where they are in doing what they're doing and that goes for all extractive sectors You cannot put a burden especially in an environment when an environmental disaster like the BP oil spill or Like this some Arco spill can happen. You cannot do that without a plan You have to have preventable barriers And you know what's interesting is last week on Friday's session 55 when we had an ocean talk Friday with Nathan We talked about you know the GMO salmon being approved by the FDA You know and they mentioned that they were gonna have barriers when the tree in their in their salmon farm So that the salmon the Atlantic salmon doesn't get back into the Atlantic or wherever they decide to have the farm in the Pacific or anything like that They had barriers. They had a plan, but how how good is their plan? Do you have they covered all basis or have they just kind of mentioned that they're gonna do it? How they demonstrated these barriers? This is what they need to do when you have an environmental sector that can have a potential impact like these sectors Can you need to focus in on their solutions? You need to focus in on making sure that they have everything laid out and the regulation should hold them to it They should enforce that they should inspect them on a six-month basis at the very least to get them to make sure that they they do this kind of stuff and I bet you they don't the regulators don't either they're under a resource or under funded They don't have the people to go in and do these inspections and these companies know that and they're willing for Them it's probably worse. It's probably actually okay for that spill to happen. It doesn't hit their bottom line and it should You know, I find it interesting how there's a one billion dollar cleanup. That's estimated that's required like I said probably for a minimum of You know the minimum cleanup. However, the environmental agency said or environmental organizations said they put in a proposal for a Billion dollar cleanup because everything's dead. Two hundred eighty thousand people are without water 280,000 Right and they expect this to 400 like a billion dollars should be the only punishment. I don't think so. I really don't think so You know, they affected so many people and they knew that an environmental disaster like this Could be affected, but they probably just said all it's a one in a million shot That this will happen. We'll make sure everything's fine. And it's not and this is what happens and it's frustrating It's so frustrating. I don't get it But there's ways we can do things about it is the way we can do things when we see Proposes like this go in before these mining companies set up shop or before these oil and gas or any kind of extract of company sets Up shop in your town or town that you love or somewhere that you know can be affected or is vulnerable to being affected By a big spill or some kind of big disaster that this company can do has a potential of doing even if they don't want to or they don't mean it You can do something about it You can go to the local government. You can go to local organizations and help them You know fight it help them make sure those regulations are put in place or help make sure that this this setup doesn't even happen at all You know, we can talk we have a voice grassroots organizations grassroots movements work if you get enough people and a big enough voice They work and I'll tell you the BP oil spill would not have gotten the attention that it did if we didn't have people on Twitter We didn't have people like Wallace Jane Nichols and people And people all over the Gulf of Mexico go down to the Gulf of Mexico Take video with their phones or with their cameras and set it up either on Twitter on Facebook there was CNN had like these these citizen reporters that you could you could join and you can report on it by Showing these tar balls that were coming up to the to the shore It would have gotten the attention that it did without social media without that grassroots Movement to tell people hey, this is what's going on. This is what's really going on You know back 10 20 years ago. We didn't have that we didn't have access to that technology And we probably didn't think the second about it. We probably said, oh, there's an oil spill That's too bad or a mining dam broke. That's too bad But we never saw the impacts once you see it was video and pictures. It's that much more Influential has that much more of an impact and it's it plays on your emotions We're just like holy cow. What have we done for what? Right is it to line some executives pockets is it to supply something that we don't really need all that stuff Right, it makes you ask those questions So look out for these things if you see a petition or you see someone complaining or trying to or trying to protest us against a Specific mining operation that's going up that shouldn't be going up where they are because you know the regulations aren't strong enough Or you don't think it'll protect enough look at their history Look at how many spills they've these this company has had that you're that you're looking at all that kind of stuff You know do the research behind it and speak up Because it's not just for the ocean. It's not just for the land. It's not just for the fresh water It's for everything. It's for people 280,000 people are now without water and it's been two weeks and it's going to be a lot longer It's going to take 30 years to cook to clean up And you know a billion dollars is not going to do it So that's it for me today I apologize for making it so negative tomorrow I'm coming up with a little bit of a better story on what you can do and how you can get involved more in ocean Conservation so it's going to be a little better. I promise, but until then I hope you have a better Wednesday and To do something to feel like you really want to do something do go to our shop speak up for blue dot com forward slash shop buy an item Use that as ocean awareness talk to people about it spread this story around other stories That's on speak up for blue dot com or somewhere you found on the internet right Talk to people about it bring it up into conversations and then talk about the solutions and what you can do There's lots of things that you can do, but by buying some of these items. You're raising that awareness You're supporting a great organization and sea turtles forever And you're helping us kind of continue on with raising awareness on a mass sort of media produce production line sort of thing So thank you very much. I appreciate you listening. I appreciate you sharing this story I apologize again for making it so so negative, but it needed to be spread it needed to be told But you've been listening to speak up for the podcast. I am your host Andrew Lewin. Have a great Wednesday happy conservation You You you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you.