Brazil’s petrochemical giant Braskem has said it has reached a 356 million dollar (£277 million) settlement with a coastal city where four decades of the company’s rock salt mining destroyed five urban neighbourhoods and displaced tens of thousands of people.
Around 200,000 people in the Alagoas state’s capital of Maceio were affected by the excessive extraction of rock salt, according to the Brazil Senate’s website.
In recent years, several Maceio communities became ghost towns as residents accepted Braskem’s payouts to relocate.
The company has so far paid over 3.7 billion reais (£602 million) in various compensations, including financial aid, Braskem said earlier this month. It said that Friday’s settlement “represents yet another important advance” in the issue of Alagoas.
According to Braskem, more than 17,000 residents — or over 90% of all residents that the company plans to compensate — and more than 5,000 businesses had received compensation by the end of June.
Local activists were less enthusiastic following Friday’s announcement.
Pastor Wellington Santos at the Baptist church in Pinheiro, one of the affected neighbourhoods, said he recognises the funds will be used to “modernise the city and make it even more beautiful,” but wondered whether any amount of money could compensate for the destruction.
Alexandre Sampaio, who heads an association of the mining victims, said the full extend of the mining damage is difficult to comprehend.
Braskem is one of the biggest petrochemical companies in the Americas, owned primarily by Brazilian state-run oil company Petrobras and construction giant Novonor, formerly known as Odebrecht.
Petrobras is currently negotiating a potential sale of Braskem.
Rock salt mining is a process of extracting salt from deep underground deposits. However, brine-filled cavities left behind when the salt has been extracted can eventually collapse, causing the soil above to settle. Structures built on top of such areas can topple.
