The death of a Brazilian community leader followed concerns about contaminated water around the aluminium plant but its Norwegian owners deny responsibility

Pollution, illness, threats and murder: is this Amazon factory the link?

For years, the small communities near an industrial park in Barcarena, in the Brazilian Amazon state of Pará, complained that a Norwegian-owned aluminium plant and other factories were contaminating their water, causing diarrhoea and vomiting and poisoning fish and local produce.

In November they launched a $154m legal claim for environmental and moral damages against the Pará state government, the Hydro Alunorte alumina refinery and the Albras aluminium factory. The Norwegian company Norsk Hydro owns 92% of Hydro Alunorte and 51% of Albras.

Community organisers began to receive threats. Then came the February rains, which brought floods of red-coloured water and mud.

And then came the murder.

Paulo Nascimento, 47, was shot dead early on Monday morning. He was a leading member of a community group known as Cainquiama. Ismael Moraes, a lawyer acting for the group, said they believe his death was connected to their campaign.

Halvor Molland, Norsk Hydro’s senior vice-president of media relations, said Nascimento’s death was “a tragic murder” and a matter for the police.



“Hydro strongly disapproves any action of this nature and repudiates any type of association between its activities and actions against residents and communities of Barcarena,” Molland said. Police are not currently planning to question company staff.

Nascimento’s killing comes just weeks after government researchers said they found evidence of a contaminating leak from the alumina refinery, south-west of the state capital, Belém.

“We have been threatened since we denounced the company,” said Bosco Martins Júnior, 42, a leader of Cainquiama, which stands for the Amazon Association of Mixed Race, Indigenous and Quilombolas (descendants of enslaved people). “We have to trust in God and hide.”

After Martins Júnior reported threats in January, a state prosecutor requested protection for the group, but the then security secretary said the decision had to be made by the state council for the protection of human rights defenders.

Norsk Hydro describes the Alunorte plant as the world’s largest alumina refinery. The company’s biggest shareholder, with 34%, is the Norwegian government, which contributes towards Brazil’s environmental protection and last year rebuked President Michel Temer over rising deforestation and moves to reduce protection.



Nilson Cardoso, president of a commercial association in nearby Beja, said the area had suffered from pollution for years.



“The number of fish has reduced, the fruit are not the same as they were before,” he said. Local people have suffered health problems including diarrhoea, vomiting, hair loss and itching, he said.

During heavy rains between 16 and 18 February, people living near the plant’s two reject basins reported floods of contaminated red water and mud.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Heavy rains in February caused flooding of red water around the plant’s two reject basins. Photograph: Evandro Chagas Institute

“It started to inundate the homes of people near the basin – the streams started to receive this red mud, the colour of the streams started to change, dead fish started appearing,” Cardoso said.



The company denies it was responsible for the floods and said various factors could have caused long-term contamination in the area. But it has admitted making unauthorised discharges of rainwater that might have mixed with bauxite dust and caustic soda traces.

On 17 February state government officials flew over the affected area and photographed areas within the company’s plant flooded with red water, said Laércio de Abreu, a state prosecutor. “There was environmental damage,” he said.

The next day, a team from the Evandro Chagas Institute, a research institute in Belém that is part of the Brazil’s ministry of health, found areas inside and outside the plant flooded with the same coloured water, high levels of contamination – and a waste pipe that was not officially supposed to exist.

“This clandestine pipeline emptied effluents from inside the company to the environment,” said Marcelo Lima, a researcher who led the team.



In a stream in the nearby community of Bom Futuro, Lima’s team found aluminium levels of 22mg per litre, well above Brazil’s legal limit of 0.1mg per litre. Around the clandestine waste pipe the level was nearly 6,000 mg per litre. High levels of nitrate, sulphate, chloride and lead were also detected.

“This is the Amazon – it is very sad to accept this pollution in our rivers,” said Lima.



Courts ordered the company to reduce production by 50% and stop using one rejects basin which only had a licence for testing.



In a telephone interview, Norsk Hydro’s chief financial officer and head of Brazilian operations, Eivind Kallevik, denied the company was responsible for any flooding or leaks.



“We did not find any indication that anything has flown over or overflowed from the deposit areas,” he said. “There was significant rainfall, which led to a very, very difficult situation for the local population.”



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Norsk Hydro said that internal flooding at its plant had caused ‘no significant environmental impact’. Photograph: Evandro Chagas Institute

Molland said some internal flooding was caused by a pump failure but all excess water was channelled towards the water treatment system. Hydro’s own testing in the area showed “no significant environmental impact”.



Kallevik said the company was distributing water to local communities and had launched two investigations.

Marcelo Lima’s team have since found another channel which he said allowed raw effluents to flow into a nearby river. Hydro said it made unauthorised discharges, including “PH-treated rainwater”, through this channel on 17 February and periodically from 20-25 February.

“Rainwater from the refinery area may contain bauxite dust and traces of caustic soda, but the water had not been in contact with the bauxite residue deposit areas,” it said.

After a previous leak in 2009, Simone Pereira, a professor of chemistry at the Federal University of Pará, found high levels of cadmium and aluminium.

In 2014, she conducted a study of subterranean water quality around Barcarena – where most people get their water from wells – and found it was unsuitable for consumption, with levels of aluminium, phosphorus and lead above legal limits.

“All of this is done in the name of progress, in the name of development,” Pereira said. “Is this too high a price we are paying?”