10 years ago, when watching the mud images it took, Brazil discovered the consequences of when neglect and negligence meet. The tragedy in itself should have caused profound changes in the management, governance and transparency of the dams. This is not what happened. Four years later, in 2019, the story was repeated even more tragically in: 272 dead, a buried village and another river contaminated by heavy metals.
It was to be expected to be adopted to avoid further disasters. In fact, in 2020, Congress approved Law 14,066, which reinforced the regulatory framework, establishing fines and more duties to agents. But until December 2024 ,. Of these, only 1,463 have registered dam safety plan, and only 601 were inspected by 2024 – staff scarcity.
In this scenario of state operational disability, the active participation of society should not only be respected, but very welcome. However, the National Mining Agency (ANM) seems to do the opposite. Answers sent to and shared with this spine are revolting. Asked via Access to Information Law (LAI) on regular security inspection reports – essential documents to verify the stability of dam structures – ANM said it did not have the information. It claimed that the reports “eventually received by ANM occur outside the system, in the context of specific inspection actions”.
“Eventually” should not exist in the vocabulary of an agency responsible for the security of millions of people and integer ecosystems. To make matters worse, ANM is still supported by a laughable wordplay: it states that the law requires reports “to be available” but not that they are “presented”.
Also absurd is the justification that many of these documents bring “industrial secrecy clauses and intellectual property.” As if the risk of breaking a dam was strategic market information. Even more serious is the guidance for citizens to look for their own companies, exempting their fundamental role in ensuring access and mediating this relationship in the name of the public interest. “This omission protects the entrepreneur to do whatever he wants,” says Daniel Neri, professor at IFMG (Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Minas Gerais).
The icing on the cake is the final sentence of the Mining Dam Safety Superintendence: “We seem strange to nonconformity with the fact that ANM does not have the requested information.” Strange, in fact, it is a regulatory agency not to stop or provide basic information that justifies its own reason for existing.
In short, ANM has supervised less than 3% of the dams last year, trusts in self -declarations of the entrepreneurs themselves, does not centralize the data it receives (when it receives) and still prevents civil society from exercising the control it itself does not seem to be able to do. It is an affront to public and environmental security.
It is urgent that the Ministry of Mines and Energy and the Federal Public Prosecution Service require ANM to immediately publish all reports it already has, create a central repository, oblige the standardized data submission by companies and make it available in active transparency.
This institutional stance violates the principles of transparency, prevention and precaution in front of the specific legislation for the theme and basic assumptions of and. It is not possible to admit that, omitted, the state follows by repeating errors that made possible disasters such as Mariana and Brumadinho.
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