OREANDA-NEWS. May 04, 2011. Works in the land that belonged to Inga Mercantil’s bankrupt estate in Itaguai (RJ) will start in May. The waste confinement area corresponds to 67 soccer fields

Shana Reis

Carlos Minc – secretary of the state Environment Department; Wilson Bruner – Usiminas CEO; Sergio Cabral - governor of Rio de Janeiro;

Luiz Fernando Pezao - vice-governor of Rio de Janeiro and Regis Fichtner, secretary of Government Affairs, during the ceremony to announce the environmental recovery in Itaguai (RJ).

Usiminas will start the environmental recovery of its land in Itaguai (RJ) in May. The land – one of Brazil’s largest environmental liabilities – belonged to Inga Mercantil’s bankrupt estate and it is an alternative for the future port facilities to be built by Usiminas. The works are foreseen to last 18 months, with BRL  92 million expenditure.

The 850,000-m2 land was purchased by Usiminas in June 2008. The company removed the old sheds from the area and prepared an executive engineering project for the environmental recovery, which was approved by State Environment Institute (Inea)in October 2010.

“With this initiative Usiminas gives a real example of its social awareness and commitment to the environment. I hope other large companies in our country will replicate this example, in order to improve the people’s quality of life”, Sergio Cabral, governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro, said.

Confinement

Usiminas chose the Geotechnical Encapsulation method, according to which the wastes are confined in the place where they are. The main advantage of this method, which has found widespread application in Europe, United States and Canada, is the resulting lower environmental impact, as it avoids creating a new environmental liability in another place.

According to this process, Usiminas will confine 2 million tonnes of wastes using a waterproof blanket in the underground. The system will be monitored to hinder leaks. The contaminated waste confinement area totals around 560,000 m2, which corresponds to 67 soccer fields.

Community actions

In addition to properly disposing the wastes, Usiminas is implementing also social-environmental actions to the benefit of the community. The company has already paved 4 km of streets in the Somel neighborhood in Itaguai, which helped to improve the community’s quality of life. Moreover, Usiminas is negotiating the recovery of 12 hectares of Atlantic Woods and 6 hectares of mangrove near the area to be recovered. It would involve planting native trees around the land, including monitoring activities during the next three years at least.