Rio de Janeiro (AFP)
The Brazilian D1 club in Bahia will play Monday night with a jersey with motives representing oil spots to raise awareness of its supporters to the mysterious pollution that has stained over 2,000 km of coastline, he said Monday.
"This is your problem, it's our problem," said the club in a statement where we can see a picture of the jersey in the usual colors blue, white and red, with large black spots on the sides.
"Who spilled this oil? Who will be punished for such irresponsibility?" Says the club, double champion of Brazil (1959 and 1988).
Monday, the match opposes to Salvador Bahia and Ceara, two teams of states of Nordeste affected by this oil pollution observed since September.
The club also announced that it would auction players' jerseys for funds to help beach cleaners.
The public environmental agency Ibama has identified 200 localities whose seashores are littered with large oil slabs. More than 525 tons were removed, according to the Navy.
The oil slicks have arrived these last days on paradisiacal beaches of Pernambuco, north of Bahia, including near the seaside city of Porto de Galinhas, one of the high tourist places of Brazil.
According to local authorities in Pernambuco, the oil residues collected by the cleaning crews are sent to recycling centers and could be reused in civil construction.
The causes of this pollution, which began to be observed at the beginning of September, have not yet been determined, even though sampling analyzes confirmed that the oil was of Venezuelan origin.
Investigators are investigating, among other things, the possibility of a leak from a "ghost oil tanker" that smuggled oil because of the oil embargo imposed by the United States in Venezuela.
© 2019 AFP