The already opened 14 km stretch of the AM-366 state highway in the municipality of Tapauá (AM) is small, but concentrated. The effects of the lack of environmental licensing, the invasion of indigenous territory, an illegal dump and the silting up of rivers are in the way of the road in the interior of Amazonas, covered by Folha’s report in November.
The situation in Tapauá shows how public authorities and their representatives at different levels of government can be agents of environmental degradation.
Public funding for paving the highway segment within the municipality came from Senator Omar Aziz (-AM) through the federal Calha Norte program, at the time under the Ministry of Defense.
However, the local city hall obtained the resources despite not having authorization from state bodies, including those from , and poured concrete on a section that invaded approved indigenous land, according to a report from technicians from the Amazon government.
The road also has a dirt section that leads to an irregular dump site belonging to the city hall. The part that is still unpaved also blocks streams in the region, compromising the water security of several communities, warn indigenous organizations.
Tapauá is the fifth largest municipality in territorial extension in the country, with approximately 85,000 km². The urban core of the locality is in the area where the Purus and Ipixuna rivers meet and has no land connection with other municipalities. The distance to is around 1,200 km via the river navigation route and 450 km in a straight line.
Inspection agents, authorities, environmentalists and indigenous leaders interviewed by Folha associate it with illegal and other types of environmental degradation, such as the silting of small and medium-sized waterbeds known in the Amazon as igarapés.
These works are generally accompanied by state and federal public bodies, experts warn.
In August 2021, the mayor of Tapauá, Gamaliel Andrade (), published a photo alongside Senator Aziz and announced on his social media profile the obtaining of public funds for the paving of the road.
“I was visiting Senator Omar Aziz to congratulate him on his birthday, and the person who won the gift was the municipality of Tapauá. The senator will provide resources for paving 10km of our road 366”, posted Andrade.
Two months later, it was the senator’s turn to use his social network to publicize the allocation of R$10 million to Tapauá for paving and upgrading the city’s roads, with a photo in his office in Brasília in the company of the mayor and councilors of Tapauá.
In an interview with Folha in November, the mayor confirmed that he had obtained Aziz’s amendment for the paving of the stretch of AM-366.
“I got an amendment through Senator Omar [Aziz] and we pave. We took over the government and approached the senator about paving our road so that our people, both white and indigenous, have the right to come and go to the city,” Andrade told the newspaper in November.
At the end of 2021, the concrete paving of 2.4 km of the road was formalized through an agreement between the city of Tapauá and the Calha Norte program department, in the amount of R$5 million.
The first transfer of R$1 million for the work was released upon recommendation of the senator in January 2023.
While the works were in progress that year, another agreement for a new section along the AM-366 route was signed by the city of Tapauá, this time with the Ministry of Integration and Regional Development, worth R$2.8 million.
Once again, the project was amended by Senator Aziz, through the Regional Development and Tourism Commission of . The first transfer of this agreement to the municipality, worth R$574 thousand, was made on December 2nd.
In November, work was being carried out on painting sidewalks along the route of the agreement with the Calha Norte program.
The lack of environmental licensing and environmental impact study caused by the work began to be investigated at the end of 2023, when the prosecutor of the Public Ministry of Accounts of Amazonas (MPC-AM) Ruy Marcelo Alencar de Mendonça opened an investigation with questions to the mayor of Tapauá and directors of two state bodies in Amazonas, the Institute of Environmental Protection of Amazonas (IPAAM) and the state secretary of Infrastructure and Metropolitan Region (Seinfra), the latter for alleged negligence in the inspection of the work along the state highway route.
After they were notified about the investigations in April 2024, the following month engineers from IPAAM and Seinfra do Amazonas went to Tapauá to inspect the work.
According to the inspection report, the technicians found that in addition to the lack of licensing and environmental impact study, the work invaded the Apurinã do Igarapé São João Indigenous Land and contained a series of irregularities.
“SEINFRA’s inspection of Highway AM-366 highlighted points of attention in the execution of the work, characterizing it as irregular. The absence of a basic project, drainage flaws and the impossibility of evaluating the track structure compromise the quality and safety of the work”, according to the engineers’ report.
At the time, IPAAM imposed a fine of R$50,000 on the city hall and ordered the work to be halted until the project was regularized.
The case was judged by the Amazonas Court of Auditors (TCE-AM) a year later, last April. The court judged the representation of the Public Ministry of Accounts of Amazonas (MPC-AM) to be valid, and imposed a fine of R$ 13 thousand reais on the mayor.
The state bodies were acquitted of the accusation of negligence in inspection, but the court ordered them to carry out within 60 days “the investigation of damage and environmental degradation to be settled through a recovery plan for the degraded area and an instrument for regularizing the work with IPAAM”.
In December, Folha contacted the press offices of IPAAM, Seinfra and the government of Amazonas to inquire whether the work had already been regularized and whether the determinations of the TCE-AM, such as the assessment of environmental damage, had already been met, but none of the bodies responded to the newspaper.
In addition to the problems noted by state agencies in Amazonas, Folha’s report found an open dump on the dirt section of the road where materials were burning and many vultures.
The chief and farmer José Raimundo Pereira Lima, known as Zé Bajaga Apurinã, 59 years old, executive coordinator of the Federation of Indigenous Organizations and Communities of Médio Purus (Focimp), says that the dump causes great discomfort and concern for the indigenous communities who live close to the site.
“In the summer, the dump catches fire 24 hours a day, there’s no way to go there, there’s a lot of smoke. It invades the houses, I don’t even know how people can stay close there. Apart from the stench, the amount of vultures and flies that appear. Wherever the wind blows, it carries that bad smell,” he said.
The mayor of Tapauá admitted that the dump did not obtain an environmental license and said that he is trying to regularize the situation.
“That dump is already historic, it’s a problem that has existed for a long time. The dump was even in the middle of the road, and now we’ve already put a little bit inside. Our intention is to create a landfill. We went to cities in Santa Catarina looking at models of recycling plants so we could create a project.”
The chief also says that works on AM-366 caused damage mainly to the region’s water beds. “The road buried springs and cut streams in between,” he said.
Regarding the lack of environmental licensing for the work and the invasion of indigenous land, Folha contacted the press office of Senator Omar Aziz, who sent a note in which he stated that the congressman’s mandate “is premised on making federal resources viable to meet the demands of the population of Amazonas, especially in municipalities in the interior that face major infrastructure and logistics challenges.”
“It is important to emphasize that the technical responsibility for preparing the work plan and the basic project, phases in which the environmental license is included, lies with the beneficiary entity and the approval of these requirements is the responsibility of the budgetary or mandatory unit responsible for the analysis. Approval only occurs when full compliance with the legislation relevant to the execution of agreements”, according to the note.
On the topic, in the interview with Folha, the mayor of Tapauá said: “the bureaucratic issue of documents and fines has arrived. Our intention as a government was to give citizens the right to come and go, both white and indigenous.”
The report contacted the Ministry of Defense, responsible for the Calha Norte Program agreement, but the body did not comment on the irregularities in AM-366.
