Wall Beyond Reason
Containment wall for mining waste, São Gonçalo de Bação
In 2015 and 2019 Brasil experienced two human engineered disasters when dams at Mariana and Brumadinho, built to contain the toxic waste products of mining, collapsed, and released an apocalyptic avalanche of seventy million cubic metres of toxic sludge. Over three hundred people dead. Livelihoods ruined. Villages destroyed. Species facing extinction. Major river systems poisoned. The trail of devastation stretched over four hundred kilometres through the Atlantic rain forest to the coast. The long-term environmental damage is incalculable. As the disaster quickly became global news, the mining companies immediately mobilised their propaganda departments and apologised for what they claimed were unfortunate accidents, but which critics refer to, as socio-environmental crimes. Evidence surfaced that not only did the companies know that the dams were unstable, but they had calculated the risks of them collapsing in terms of compensation. Poor maintenance, ineffective warning systems, and most significantly, cheap poorly built structures, made such disasters inevitable. What is terrifying is that it is estimated there are at least another fifty dams at high risk of failing. The intensive extraction of finite resources produces all sorts of infrastructural and technological aberrations that exist for no other reason than to increase the speed and volume at which materials can be removed from the earth. At first glance, the wall in the picture above, a short distance from the bucolic village of São Gonçalo de Bação, appears to be a dam built to produce hydroelectric energy. In fact, it is just a containment wall, constructed for no other reason than to protect nearby villages and towns in the event of the collapse of three smaller dams further up the hill. Ninety metres high, three and hundred and fifty wide, its construction demanded extensive deforestation and the removal of homes. In years to come when the fish have died, the red dust air is unbreathable and the acid soil infertile, its cracked hulk will remain as a monument to human folly.