SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil’s federal government on Friday reached a multibillion-dollar settlement with the mining companies responsible for a 2015 dam collapse that the government said was the country’s worst-ever environmental disaster. Under the agreement, Samarco — a joint venture of Brazilian mining giant Vale and Anglo-Australian firm BHP — will pay 132 billion reais ($23 billion) over 20 years. The payments are meant to compensate for human, environmental and infrastructure damage caused by the release of an immense amount of toxic mining waste into a major river in southeastern Minas Gerais state, killing 19 people and ravaging entire villages. “We are fixing a disaster that could have been avoided, but wasn’t,” President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said in a hall of the presidential palace, surrounded by governors…
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