The sign — “risk of drowning” — outside one of Rio de Janeiro’s freshwater reservoirs looks like a joke: There is no water there left to drown in.
Instead, the Saracuruna reservoir near Duque de Caxias, outside Rio, is an expanse of sand, mud and vegetation. Four stray dogs scamper and cattle come to drink from a stream still running through the middle.
“It’s been a long time since there was any water here,” said a security guard walking up the dry bed to order journalists away on Friday.
The scene at Saracuruna is repeated across much of eastern Brazil between Rio and the megacity of Sao Paulo, with reservoirs and rivers running dry and authorities scrambling to avoid having to impose rationing.
The Rio de Janeiro State Department of the Environment blames “the worst drought in 85 years” for the crisis, while independent activists say decades of bad policy is equally culpable.
Although the southern tropical rainy season is just beginning, scientists fear that the El Nino weather phenomenon active this year may disrupt that hoped for relief from the sky, leaving tens of millions of people at risk.
Daily water access, potential disruption of the 2016 Rio Olympics, crop irrigation and the running of Brazil’s hydroelectric industry, which provides for 75 percent of the country’s power, are all at stake.
And with dire water shortages also breaking out as far afield as California and China, the crisis could also be a harbinger of wider trouble to come.
In Xerem, a neighborhood of Duque de Caxias, about 50km from Rio, locals talk in disbelief about what remains of the river that until about three years ago rushed through to the Saracuruna reservoir, which was built principally to serve a Petrobras oil refinery.
“We used to fish there, take swims,” said Renato Tomaz, 42. “There was a lot of water.”
Only a shallow, almost motionless stream between 2m deep banks thick with plants remains.
“It’s not a river anymore. It’s a forest,” Tomaz said.
Scale that havoc up on a national level and you get the picture of what is happening along the huge system of reservoirs stretching through Sao Paulo and Rio states. The Paraibuna reservoir, biggest in the chain serving Rio de Janeiro, is heading inexorably to dead pool status, meaning the remaining water is not usable. In all, the four main reservoirs of the Paraiba do Sul network dipped this month to less than 6 percent of active volume. The Cantareira system feeding Sao Paulo is in only slightly better shape, with 16 percent of active water left.
A graphic on the water authority’s Web site shows the dial hovering above the red danger zone.
And the southeast is not the only area suffering. The biggest reservoir of the northeast, Sobradinho, is reported to have fallen to less than 6 percent active capacity.
The idea of drought in Brazil might sound ridiculous.
Latin America’s biggest country is one of the world’s great sources for fresh water, accounting for about 12 percent of supplies.
However, much of that water is locked into the mighty Amazon river in the north, of little use to greater Sao Paulo’s 20 million and Rio de Janeiro’s about 10 million people.
And even without the current drought, environmental experts say, government mismanagement has been enough to bring Brazil to the brink of disaster.
“It’s much more serious than a crisis. A crisis is something that ends eventually, but this is structural,” Rio-based environmentalist Sergio Ricardo said. “You have a prolonged lack of rainfall, but also prolonged bad management that has left Rio completely vulnerable.”
Those mistakes range from inefficient exploitation of water supplies to relentless pollution of the precious resource.
For example in greater Rio, 80 percent of sewage is dumped untreated, much of that into rivers, Ricardo said.
The pledge by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to “work, work, work, work and work” for her country has been named the catchphrase of the year, recognizing the effort Japan’s first female leader had to make to reach the top. Takaichi uttered the phrase in October when she was elected as head of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Many were initially as worried about her work ethic as supportive of her enthusiasm. In a country notorious for long working hours, especially for working women who are also burdened with homemaking and caregiving, overwork is a sensitive topic. The recognition triggered a
Tropical Storm Koto killed three people and left another missing as it approached Vietnam, authorities said yesterday, as strong winds and high seas buffeted vessels off the country’s flood-hit central coast. Heavy rains have lashed Vietnam’s middle belt in recent weeks, flooding historic sites and popular holiday destinations, and causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. Authorities ordered boats to shore and diverted dozens of flights as Koto whipped up huge waves and dangerous winds, state media reported. Two vessels sank in the rough seas, a fishing boat in Khanh Hoa province and a smaller raft in Lam Dong, according to the
Sri Lanka made an appeal for international assistance yesterday as the death toll from heavy rains and floods triggered by Cyclone Ditwah rose to 123, with another 130 reported missing. The extreme weather system has destroyed nearly 15,000 homes, sending almost 44,000 people to state-run temporary shelters, the Sri Lankan Disaster Management Centre (DMC) said. DMC Director-General Sampath Kotuwegoda said relief operations had been strengthened with the deployment of thousands of troops from the country’s army, navy and air force. “We have 123 confirmed dead and another 130 missing,” Kotuwegoda told reporters in Colombo. Cyclone Ditwah was moving away from the island yesterday and
‘HEART IS ACHING’: Lee appeared to baffle many when he said he had never heard of six South Koreans being held in North Korea, drawing criticism from the families South Korean President Lee Jae-myung yesterday said he was weighing a possible apology to North Korea over suspicions that his ousted conservative predecessor intentionally sought to raise military tensions between the war-divided rivals in the buildup to his brief martial law declaration in December last year. Speaking to reporters on the first anniversary of imprisoned former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol’s ill-fated power grab, Lee — a liberal who won a snap presidential election following Yoon’s removal from office in April — stressed his desire to repair ties with Pyongyang. A special prosecutor last month indicted Yoon and two of his top
RSS