Lithium mining brings sickness to Jequitinhonha Valley communities

ITINGA, Minas Gerais, Brazil — It is the middle of the night in Minas Gerais, and work at the lithium mine in Jequitinhonha Valley does not stop. Noise from hundreds of machines churning up the soil echoes off the mountains, destroying the peace and quiet of the traditional communities living in the region. It is 3:30 a.m. when a line of trucks forms on top of a rise. With the help of tractors, tons of rock are dumped downhill. The rumbling mixed with the sound of engines reaches the 70 homes in the village called Piauí Poço Dantas, Itinga, established 150 years ago on the banks of Piauí Creek, a tributary of Jequitinhonha River. The hill is, in fact, waste rock Pile 5 —stored unusable materials rejected from Brazil’s largest lithium mine. Rising 20 meters (66 feet) above the ground and occupying 560,000 square meters (6 million square feet, more than 110 football fields) of land area, the pile’s size has quadrupled over the last 11 months and is now just a few meters from the creek and the homes in the village. If the mine’s owner, Sigma Lithium, upholds its plans for expansion, the situation could get worse. Currently producing 270,000 tons of lithium concentrate per year, the mining company recently received 500 million reais ($86.3 million) in financing from Fundo Clima, the Climate Fund, to double its capacity. The financing was approved after an analysis of the projects and the licenses that Sigma obtained from the appropriate environmental…This article was originally published on Mongabay