The Federal Court denied this Wednesday (1st) a request by the Federal Public Ministry to prevent the hull of the aircraft carrier São Paulo from being sunk in Brazilian waters. The request was made on Tuesday (31), after the Navy’s intention to postpone the sinking was made public due to an offer by a Saudi group to acquire the hull.
According to the MPF, the filing of the action was motivated by information that the sinking of the vessel was scheduled for this Wednesday (1st).
In the decision, Judge Ubiratan de Couto Maurício, of the 9th Federal Court in Pernambuco, justified the rejection of the allegation of “plausibility” of the request for an injunction.
“If the position of the Brazilian Navy is based on the sinking it is concerned about, an understanding supported by the ontic presumption of the legitimacy of its acts, it is not at all credible that the extent of the environmental damage was not considered by it in a judgment of weighing interests”, wrote the magistrate.
The judge also wrote that the “collective interest” prevails and determined that Ibama (Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) be informed of the decision.
The hull of the São Paulo is made up of nine tons of asbestos, a substance with toxic and carcinogenic potential.
The Saudi group’s proposal, offering around R$ 30 million, was made on Monday (30th), after the Sheet reveal that the Navy planned to sink the vessel in view of the advanced degree of degradation of the old airfield.
With the proposal, the Navy decided to postpone the sinking of the hull, which was scheduled to take place this Wednesday (1st). Military sources do not rule out the possibility of the vessel involuntarily sinking, as the ship’s buoyancy conditions are terrible.
The MPF asked, in the action, that the Federal Court order the Navy to immediately suspend “any service aimed at sinking the vessel, on the high seas or near the coast, without the presentation of studies that prove the absence of environmental risk”.
The objective of the MPF, as stated in the action, was to prevent the sinking decision from causing “irreparable damage to the marine environment, the public health of the population and irreversible health consequences”.
In the action, the MPF also asked the Ministry of Defense to promote technical studies for the proper disposal of the hull, without risks to the environment and public health, or opt for the sale of the former ship to a company with conditions to carry out the necessary repairs. to safe disposal.
On January 13, when it underwent a technical inspection, the aircraft carrier was sailing, under tow, 20 nautical miles from the Port of Suape, in Pernambuco.
The aircraft carrier São Paulo is 266 meters long. Its armament consisted of three twin missile launchers and heavy-caliber machine guns.
Unused for decades, the ship was dismantled in France. In the 1990s, it went through a deamiantation process, which removed 55 tons of the toxic product.
Even so, asbestos is still present in the walls of the aircraft carrier – the substance was used as a thermal and acoustic insulator, to reduce the noise of the aircraft taking off for the crew.
The aircraft carrier was sold by the Navy to the Turkish shipyard Sök Denizcilik and Ticaret Limited, specialized in dismantling ships. The vehicle left Brazil on August 4, on a trip that generated protests around the world and was monitored in real time by Greenpeace.
The Navy says that, after the decision to demobilize the aircraft carrier, it opted to sell the hull for “green dismantling”, a safe recycling process for which the Turkish shipyard Sök is accredited and certified.
But, in the face of complaints about the illegal export of asbestos, the Turkish government revoked authorization for the vessel to enter on August 26, when the ship was approaching the Strait of Gilbraltar, on a trip made with the help of a tugboat.
The decision responded to complaints from organizations such as Greenpeace and the NGO Shipbreaking Platform, which were protesting against receiving the vessel.
Analyzes carried out by the NGO Shipbreaking on a twin aircraft carrier to the São Paulo identified 760 tons of asbestos on the vessel. In view of this, the organization began to question whether, in fact, the hull sent by Brazil would have the 10 tons of toxic substance as foreseen in the inventory.
Ibama (Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) suspended the export license and determined the ship’s return to Brazil.
In Brazilian waters, the Turkish tugs left the aircraft carrier’s hull and the Navy returned to take control of the vessel.
The report of a technical inspection by the Navy carried out on the vessel on January 13 found tears in the hull, an increase in the level of flooding and corrosion.
“A critical increase in the degradation of the safety of the hull can be seen, whether due to the loss of buoyancy conditions, or the irreversible loss of the minimum stability in damage for navigation in the open sea, in addition to the increase in the extent of the damage to the hull”, warn the technicians, in a document obtained by the Sheet.
By mid-January, around 2,787 cubic meters of water had entered the hull. The limit for safe navigation is 3,530 cubic meters.
“It is possible to say that the safety of navigation can be guaranteed until the established limit of shipment of more than 743 m³ of water is reached, foreseen to happen, in the best hypotheses, in a maximum of four weeks”, he warns.
With no companies in Brazil to carry out the green dismantling provided for in the contract and with the imbroglio with the Turkish company, the Navy planned the controlled sinking of the vessel.
The technique used would involve a series of explosions to open holes in the hull, which would also take the more than nine tons of asbestos present in the vessel to the ocean.
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