Gestão de risco associada ao licenciamento ambiental de barragens de mineração: uma análise para a região do Triângulo Mineiro e Alto Paranaíba

Abstract

Environmental licensing is becoming more important and indispensable to assure quality and safety of society and environment itself. Over the years, environmental licensing processes and legislation have given more attention and seriousness to ways of mitigating and controlling emergency situations. But, given the occurrence of some disasters involving tailings dam and the environmental and social distress after its occurrence, it is evident there are still important gaps in relation to risk management and consequently the safety management of these projects. Given the importance of safety management and its consideration during the environmental licensing process, the present study aims to analyze the extent to which safety management has been considered in environmental licensing processes for mining enterprises that include tailings dams, more specifically how often a Contingency Plan or Emergency Action Plan for Mining Dams (PAEBM) has been presented in the licensing process to assess the risk of rupture of mining tailings dams, focusing on projects licensed by the Regional Environment Superintendence (SUPRAM) of Triângulo Mineiro and Alto Paranaíba (TMAP). The study was carried out based on a review of environmental legislation and literature, in addition to an analysis of environmental licensing processes focusing on the Environmental Control Plans (PCA) presented for the acquisition of the enterprise's installation environmental license. From the gathered data, it was possible to identify which companies met the minimum criteria required and relate the results to the current legislation. Thus, it was identified that the environmental licensing processes for tailings dams, from 2007 to 2017, presented environmental studies mostly incomplete, vague and not in-depth content, they did not present a good safety management of dam and/or plans to control, contain and prevent dam rupture and all the impacts generated by this event/circumstance, in addition to presenting scant content about social communication and plans to prepare communities for possible dam rupture. The results were also associated with the environmental licensing process flaws pointed out in the literature.