Mario Osava* – IPS/IFEJ
RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 31 2006 (IPS) – Around 30 million people are affected by water contamination in Brazil s two biggest metropolitan areas. In Sao Paulo, this means water shortages. In Rio de Janeiro, the water supply itself is not diminished, but pollution threatens to make it useless for human consumption.
As a result, these two heavily populated areas live under the threat of periodic shutdowns of their water networks.
For the 18.5 million people who live in the Sao Paulo metropolitan region, it s a time bomb that could explode any moment, says Maria Luisa Ribeiro, coordinator of the Waters Network, an initiative of the local environmental group SOS Mata Atlantica Foundation to promote communication and social participation in national water management.
At their maximum capacity, the eight systems that supply Sao Paulo handle 65,000 litres of water per second. The population relies on the good will of Sao Pedro , seen as the god of rains by some Brazilians, Ribeiro said in an interview.
For many years, the different neighbourhoods shut down waterworks on alternate days. This rationing, which lasted until 2002, came to an end thanks to an adjustment in distribution and to greater rainfall, but without expanding the availability of water, said the activist.
The city of Sao Paulo was established in a location with limited water resources, at the head of the Tieté River, which crosses Sao Paulo state. Later, deforestation and housing along the river s banks limited its capacity, and continues to be encroached by illegal settlements.
Related IPS Articles
The 2000 census led to estimates that 1.6 million people reside in those areas, according to the non-governmental Socioambiental Institute, which studies and monitors local water sources. The population has grown a great deal in recent years, and that means more sewage and garbage is being dumped in reservoirs and rivers.
The rigidity of the 1975 Water Source Protection Act, which restricts settlements in watershed areas, had the opposite of its intended effect: the area was occupied illegally, which led to unregulated water and sewerage runoff, noted Ribeiro.
And greater contamination makes water more expensive. In the last five years, the need for chemicals for treating the water to make it potable has increased 51 percent. Distribution costs have also gone up, because half the metropolitan population relies on the Cantareira system, located 70 km from downtown Sao Paulo. Furthermore, that water comes from the Piracicaba River, which is shared with other big cities, generating management conflicts and disputes, Ribeiro said.
SABESP, the Sao Paulo state sanitation agency today recognised as the best in Brazil implemented measures to expand water resources and water treatment, improve distribution and promote rational water usage.
This was in addition to the fight against water leaks. An estimated one-third of water is lost through breaches in the distribution network.
Meanwhile, the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan region has a less pressing situation. The water supply is assured until 2025 though not necessarily potable for its more than 11 million inhabitants and new industries, said Friedrich Hermes, president of the Guandú River Watershed Committee, source of 85 percent of the water.
The system benefits from a series of five dams built decades ago to generate electricity, exploiting the Paraíba do Sul River, which begins near Sao Paulo and runs across all of Rio de Janeiro state.
Its waters are the main supplier of the Guandú system, which provides 120,000 litres per second untreated, of which 90,000 are used for the urban water distribution, Hermes said. The remainder of the flow is the basis for the prediction that there will be no shortage until 2025.
The volume gives officials a bit of tranquility, but does not ensure water quality. There is no risk of shortage in the short term. The Guandú River, expanded by the man-made shift of water from the Paraíba do Sul, provides a more than sufficient volume, said Edes Fernandes de Oliveira of CEDAE, the Rio de Janeiro state water and sanitation company.
Nevertheless, if aggression against the environment doesn t stop, in the long term there will be problems, he said in an interview.
Among the main problems is runoff untreated of water used by the population. This has grown a great deal over the past decades in the Guandú basin as the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area has expanded to the west.
CEDAE, which aims to protect the local environment and promote reforestation of the banks of the rivers and reservoirs, also banned extraction of sands from the Guandú riverbed an activity that previously went unchecked.
Today the the influx of people has slowed and shouldn t grow very much in the next few decades, said Hermes. Another problem is the garbage dumped along the rivers, and the wastewater from industry attracted by the abundance of water itself and by other favourable factors, like the Sepetiba port.
José Roberto Araujo, parliamentary advisor and an official with the Rio state environmental body, offered another explanation. Because it is located near the middle Paraíba do Sul River, the city is assured abundant water, but also the disadvantage of receiving the pollution from Sao Paulo state, where the river runs through a densely populated and industrialised area, he said.
The river also receives the runoff from other major cities within the state itself, without prior treatment, he said. The industries located along the river contaminate the water, but are under tighter controls. And some of them, like the national steel giant, CSN, have complied with a recent programme to curb pollutants, Araujo added.
But the problem surpasses state borders. According to Paulo Canedo, a water expert at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, the general problem across Brazil is the scant attention paid urban sanitation and water treatment, and decades without the necessary investment.
Governments spend a lot on making water potable and on medical attention, but fail to make basic sanitation a priority, which would be more economical because it would reduce the cost of obtaining water and would improve public health, Canedo said.
(*This story is part of a series of features on sustainable development by IPS Inter Press Service and IFEJ International Federation of Environmental Journalists. Originally published Oct. 29 by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.)
