Brasília, July 7, 2004 (Agência Brasil) - While people in Alagoa Grande keep going about their business, trying to recover from the damage caused by the breach in the Camará dam, government agencies are being mobilized to discover who is to blame for the disaster. For their part, members of the current and previous state administrations, headed by Cássio Cunha Lima (PSDB) and José Maranhão (PMDB), respectively, are handling the case through an exchange marked by a mixture of technical and political considerations.

"I can't state with certainty why the dam broke. Everything points to a problem with the foundations, and we have to find out whether it was a technical flaw, an error in the project, or faulty execution," affirms the Deputy Secretary of Infrastructure, Hipólito Militão. Correcting himself, he indicates that he does not regard the Camará dam rupture as an isolated instance: "From what I can see, there was irresponsibility involved. There is a lot going on for which someone has to be brought to account."

Militão refers to paving defects in highway construction, such as state highway PB-008 along the southern coast of the state and the widening of federal highway BR-230 between João Pessoa and Campina Grande, likewise concluded in 2002, at the end of José Maranhão's administration, as well as an aqueduct, which, according to him, presents operational problems, and even school buildings and dams that are disproportionately large.

In March the Federal and State Public Prosecutors' Offices filed public civil suits for presumed acts of administrative malfeasance committed by members of the previous state administration and engineering firms contracted for the work on the BR-230 highway. The Federal Accounting Court (TCU) had already detected overbilling of US$ 3.2 million (R$ 10 million) for the project.

To enable the highway duplication project to be completed, the Minister of Transportation, Alfredo Nascimento, announced, in the beginning of June, during a trip to the state, that a new round of bidding will be held, since the earlier one is still under investigation.

"I can't say that the Camará case is an isolated instance. All these projects were done in a hurry," Militão affirms, without neglecting first to stress that it would be rash to draw final conclusions about who is responsible for the problems. "We're getting the Public Prosecutors' Office involved in this, too, to see who's right or wrong."

SACRIFICE

Francisco Sarmento, Secretary of Water Resources during Maranhão's government, defends the way the previous administration managed the Camará project. "As far as the state government at that time is concerned, we can guarantee that all the appropriate steps for the execution of a quality project were taken."

He also asserts that conclusions about the accident can only be drawn after the technical reports are completed. For Sarmento, "the dam, as was widely reported, suffered an accident that was geological in nature."

Nevertheless, even though he emphasizes the unique character of the episode, he states that one part of the dam had been manifesting flaws that went unrepaired. "The passageway began to show signs in February that the foundations were in need of repair. Despite this, the problem persisted until June, when, that night, this event occurred that at first glance appears to us to have been a geological sacrifice."

For Sarmento, linking the problems of the Camará dam to what has been unearthed concerning highways in the state or other public works such as the aqueducts and dams mentioned by Militão is a political move. "What one has observed in all the infrastructure areas in which the previous administration acted is the transformation of eminently technical questions into political issues, which, unfortunately, contributes nothing whatsoever to making progress in understanding the problems and avoiding them in the future."

The former Secretary believes that what is common to the various incidents that were cited is the excess rain that fell this year in the region. "All these problems, the Camará dam in particular, are directly or indirectly related to the atypical nature of the winter of 2004, which hadn't occurred in 20 years.

MEASURES

On July 1, the Paraíba government instituted a technical commission, with 30 days to submit its conclusions on the causes of the dam breach. The group is headed by the state Secretary of Infrastructure, Zenóbio Toscano de Oliveira.

Also on July 1, the Federal Prosecutors' Office in Paraíba began a series of hearings with the companies responsible for the construction of the dam. The first company to testify was Atecel, responsible for the original project, which proposed the construction of an earth dam, later modified to a technique known as "rolled concrete."

Reporter: Spensy Pimentel
Translator: David Silberstein