Cleanup continues for BHP Billiton's Brazilian venture

BHP Billiton's Brazilian joint venture continued the clean-up from the catastrophic Bento Rodrigues dam disaster on Tuesday, amid ongoing legal action in the country's courts.

The FTSE 100 mining company updated the market on the dam breaches at Fundão and Santarém, which occurred on 5 November.

BHP Billiton and Vale each held a 50% stake in Samarco. Processing and mining operations at the site remained suspended.

The company said the legal proceedings, brought by the Brazilian federal and certain state governments, were seeking a BRL 20bn (£3.346bn) fund to cover clean-up and recovery.

"In connection with these proceedings, on 18 December 2015 the 12th Federal Court of Belo Horizonte handed down a decision on the interim injunctions requested", the company said in a statement.

"The Federal Court ordered Samarco to deposit BRL 2bn to a court-managed bank account within 30 days. This amount comprises 10% of the total amount sought by the plaintiffs to be included in the fund."

BHP Billiton said a daily fine of BRL 1.5m applied to Samarco for non-compliance with the deadline.

Samarco was also ordered to undertake certain remediation actions, including the prevention of waste leakage, engaging a consultant to evaluate contamination of fish and implement pest control, the removal of mud from the Rio Doce banks, adoption of measures to prevent sludge from reaching the lagoon, and presenting a comprehensive environmental and socio-economic recovery plan.

BHP said it had been advised by Samarco that "the work being undertaken ... is broadly consistent with the remediation actions ordered by the court", but did not go into further detail.

The company confirmed the death toll stood at 17, being 12 workers and five members of the local community. Two people who were working on the dam remained unaccounted for.

BHP said local Samarco representatives were still working with Brazilian authorities to relocate displaced people from temporary accommodation, and promised all of those displaced would be given the opportunity to relocate before Christmas Day.

The firm's engineers were also monitoring what remained of the dam structures, with work on the Selhinda dike wall between the Germano and Fundão dams, and repairs to the Santarém dam halfway complete.