This past weekend, the toxic river of mud that has been called “Brazil’s worst environmental disaster ever”

According to ABC news , "The waste had travelled at least 500 kilometers since the dam burst more than two weeks ago, killing at least 12 people and leaving 280,000 without water."The disaster struck when a dam collapsed at the waste reservoirs of an iron ore mineowned by Samarco, a joint venture between the mining giants BHP Billiton of Australia and Brazil's Vale. A torrent of yellowish muck burst from the tailings pond, mostly destroying the nearby village of Bento Rodrigues and contaminating the water supply to more than 200 towns.Nearby pro Rafael Teixeira – who recently won the O’Neill Coldwater Classic – had this to say: “What has happened in Brazil in recent days has left the entire surfing community in mourning -- it’s a major tragedy. We are seeing what is to me the best wave in Brazil being violently polluted and we do not know what will actually happen when the mud and its toxic components finish spreading. Not just the rivermouth wave, but the village of Regência is a very dear place, and whenever I'm home and it has good swells I go there. But now, I do not know if I can ever surf there again.”“Although discovered in the ‘70s and surfed extensively since then by the locals and nearby residents, only in the last couple of year Regência began to surface on the radars, attracting visiting surfers from other parts of Brazil and the world, thanks to the exposure gained from social media,” says local photographer Celso Pereira Jr. “The village is home to about a thousand people, mostly fishermen, who rely on the river and tourism to earn their living.”Pereira Jr continues: “Now that everything in the river has died, it’s very difficult at this point to predict for sure what will actually happen to the rivermouth wave, as this unprecedented load of toxic sludge continues to flow out into the Atlantic Ocean. Certainly the sandbar shape will change -- but even if somehow the wave still breaks, it is estimated by biologists that will take a long time until the water is suitable again for surfing and life to reflourish.”For those unfamiliar with the wave, Pereira Jr offers the following description:"Regência’s Boca do Rio (rivermouth) is the longest and most perfect wave in Brazil. A lengthy sandbar triangle formed by the Rio Doce (river) sediment patterns, welcomes Southern Hemisphere swells above 2.5 meters in height that come up the Brazilian coast and break spectacularly with world-class perfection when they reach the south side of the river’s mouth."Dubbed by the locals as "The cousins from Bali,” in reference to the perfection of Balinese waves, this dreamy left normally consists of three sections, but up to five sections have been witnessed on bigger days. The sections overlap and run about 600 yards from the initial break to the inside.The outside section breaks way out in the ocean and is mostly only reached with the help of a watercraft due to the challenges imposed by the distance from shore and the strong outflowing river current.The middle section forms when the wave wraps around a sandbar crown or island, and after a quick drop, depending on the tide and how the bottom has been shaped, it can either turn into a fast moving hollow barrel or an extensive performance wall that enables a multitude of maneuvering until you reach the inside.Behind this section is usually where surfers enter the ocean. During epic conditions, this middle section turns into two or three other sections that alternate between maneuverable walls or fast moving barrels, depending on how the sediments have settled at the seabed.The inside section is a place locals call “Mike Tyson” and where you want to quickly exit the water as to not get pounded, and walk all the way back to the sandbar island.When the swell is smaller than 2.5 meters, the beachbreaks are the best bet, and offer very fast and hollow barrels about a mile south of the rivermouth.More info (in Portuguese) at this Facebook page