Rail road (1)9 Dec 2021 18:09
Families live one meter from the AP Railroad and create an impasse for the mining company that wants to reactivate the structure after 7 years
The Amapá Railroad, deactivated since 2014, may resume activities within a period of three years. But for that, there is a big challenge: what to do with the families who live on the railroad's margins? The tracks are sometimes the backyards of the houses or are in front of the buildings, about a meter away.
The tracks serve as a path for trains that transport ore extracted from Pedra Branca do Amapari, in the interior of the state, to Santana, in the Metropolitan Region of Macapá. But the activities of the former mining company owned by billionaire businessman Eike Batista came to a standstill seven years ago, after a crisis with the collapse of the Port of Santana.
DEV Mineração took over the operations of the mineral sector in the state in 2019. The company intends to resume ore extraction, use the Amapá Railroad and reactivate the port area that collapsed in Santana. The goal is for all of this to happen within 3 years.
Technical regulations indicate that residences must be at least 15 meters from each side of the train tracks.
To ensure more security, DEV is thinking of using the minimum limit of 30 meters in the state. However, there are houses on site that are about a meter away from the trail. The structures have been in the region for years.
The situation of families who live near the railroad will be monitored by the Public Ministry (MP) of Amapá, the state government and the city of Santana, where the Railroad starts.
The Environment Secretary of Santana, Helder Lima, said that one of the solutions studied is that the families who are removed from the site are sent to a housing complex that will still be built in the municipality.
"This housing complex will be to meet targeted demands, where there are points of irregular occupation like the one on the rail. So we will work on a detailed study, seeing the needs of each one and possibly these families can be relocated there," he said . One of the families likely to be affected by the reactivation of activities on the Railroad is housewife Nilza Aguiar. She says she waits for the proposals presented by the authorities to decide what to do.
You have to look at the condition they will have if they remove the houses, because we spent it here. It wasn't even supposed to let anyone build a house here, since it's an area at risk," he said.
The Amapá Railroad connects Santana to Serra do Navio. A survey has already pointed out that, in the 210 km of tracks, there are at least 3,000 critical points, where there are houses almost on top of the structure, in addition to debris.
Attorney for DEV Mineração, Raquel Dalseco explained that the project is in the budget part, the last step before the company starts transporting the trains again.
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