New Lawsuit Against Belo Monte Questions IBAMA License
Translated from Portuguese: read the original version in Portuguese.
The new lawsuit in Federal Court, the 11th against the Belo Monte Dam, questions IBAMA's granting of the installation license without fulfillment of the project's prerequisites. 40% of the agency's prerequisites were not met, presenting a risk of social chaos.
Brazil's Federal Public Prosecutor (MPF) filed today its 11th civil
lawsuit against the Belo Monte Dam, over problems in the dam's
environmental licensing. The lawsuit demands the suspension of the
installation license, which approves the beginning of
construction, and points out the failure to meet the necessary prerequisites
to prepare the region for the project's impacts. According to a
technical report from IBAMA regarding the preparatory actions, 40% of
the conditions were not met by project developer Norte Energia, S.A.
(NESA).
IBAMA's opinion demonstrates, in 250 pages, that the prerequisites—
including improvements in health, education, sanitation, navigability,
and the completion of affected families surveys— were not met by the developer. What's worse, the report notes that the developer claimed
to have started several projects in health and education, which the
technical report found simply not to exist in early May.
The false information submitted to IBAMA was subject to notification of
NESA. In report 477/2011, IBAMA's General Coordinator for Electric
Energy Infrastructure and Director of Environmental Licensing noted the
statements contained in Article 69-A of Law 9605/98, which relates, in
summary, to the criminal conduct of presenting fully or partially
false or misleading information in an environmental licensing study or
environmental report.
Yet IBAMA granted the license anyway, creating concepts that had
previously not existed in environmental law: "in compliance," and
"partially met." Norte Energia, S.A. has not begun efforts, for
example, to improve sanitation in the region where construction
encampments are planned, but presented a project to do so only in March
2012. Instead of considering the condition unfulfilled, IBAMA
considered it to be "in compliance.”
The same concept was applied to another condition that the MPF considers
essential: implementing sanitation for water
quality control in the city of Altamira. According to IBAMA's technical
report, the condition will only be fulfilled in 2014; and because of
this delay, there will be pollution and eutrophication – rotting – of
streams that feed the city's water supply. Still, the condition was
considered “partially fulfilled.”
"The creation of flexible and elastic concepts in such serious matters
only serves the interests of NESA, which naturally seeks to hasten the
start of construction without having to spend more money in the
preparatory stage. But this is not at all in the interest of citizens in
the Brazilian Amazon— they expected to see a rigorous, exemplary
licensing process, especially since this will consume the bulk of
public resources spent over the next 30 years,” says the text of the MPF
lawsuit.
The lawsuit cites a document from IBAMA produced in 2010, in
response to an earlier civil lawsuit of the MPF. At the time, the agency
told the Federal Court: "It turns out that investment in prerequisites, in response to the objections of federal prosecutors in
the state of Para, will indeed serve the population prior to
construction, in accordance with the prior environmental license, an
absolutely new stipulation for environmental licensing.”
The document continues: "These measures of investment are expressed
as anticipatory measures, which require the developer to be responsible
for investment in the prerequisites even before the issuance of the
installation license, which allows for the commencement of construction. Investments should be made in urban relocation and in the
construction of adequate housing, made of concrete, with drainage
systems, sanitation, and paved roads. But this is exactly the opposite
of what is currently happening. These are prerequisites to the
installation license, and if the developer fails to fulfill them, IBAMA
has the prerogative to cancel the license, even before the start of
construction of the dam.”
For the MPF, by failing to meet its own prerequisites for the Belo Monte
Dam, IBAMA has reached the "limit of irresponsibility." The MPF cites
data from Rondônia which illustrate that IBAMA also used elastic
concepts to allow for the installation of the Jirau and San Antonio
Dams: “beyond the labor violations that led to the social explosion at
the Jirau construction site in March 2011 in Porto Velho, the migration
rate had already reached 22% higher than was expected, incidences of
rape had already increased by 208%, and nearly 200 children still remain
out of school in just one of the villages.”
The situation in Altamira is expected to be even more severe than in
Rondônia, because Altamira has been characterized as a region of land
and agrarian conflicts for many years, while the region is also heavily
populated by indigenous peoples. The prerequisites relating to
indigenous communities, which were scheduled to be completed before the
installation license, may now only be fulfilled before issuance of the
operating license, according to a document signed by the president of
indigenous agency Funai.
In the opinion of the MPF, both Funai and IBAMA should be overseeing
compliance of the prerequisites prior to the beginning of construction,
yet have instead chosen to make life easier for the developer by
postponing the requirements to a later date. "If the preparatory actions
that were required during the prior license were not fulfilled, what
will lead us to believe that they will be fulfilled during installation
itself? How should we give credit to the rigor of IBAMA, if IBAMA has
yet to demonstrate that rigor in its relationship with the developer?”
says the lawsuit.
The lawsuit is being processed in the 9th Circuit Federal Court in Belém with the number 18026-35.2011.4.01.3900
To follow the process: http://bit.ly/jYyTy9
Read the text of the 11th Civil Lawsuit regarding problems in the licensing of the Belo Monte Dam, in its entirety: http://bit.ly/kpoXRt