Pitinga River

The Pitinga River is a river of Amazonas state in north-western Brazil. It empties into the Balbina Dam on the Uatumã River.

Mining operation

In the 1970s the vast Amazon rainforest was being mapped through the Amazon Radar Project, a large-scale effort to chart remote landscapes. A mong its most significant findings was the detection of cassiterite located near the Waimiri Atroari Indigenous Reservation.
By 1979, geologists from Mineração Taboca, then a subsidiary of the Paranapanema heavy civil construction company, found traces of cassiterite in 1979 in tributaries of the Pitinga River.
What began as small- scale exploration quickly expanded into an industrial-scale project, reshaping the region’s social and environmental landscape. The Pitinga mine began operations in 1982.
The company built a community in the Amazon forest from Manaus with housing, schools, health facilities, power and telecommunications.
In 1985 Paranapanema invested US$15 million in infrastructure upgrades, including a 10,000 kilowatt hydroelectric power plant on the Pitinga River, expected to reduce energy costs by US$4 million annually.