ENVIRONMENT-BRAZIL:
Clean-up Efforts, a Drop
in the Ocean
By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, (IPS)
- The contrasts are
striking, and are plain
to visitors from the
moment they arrive in
Rio. From the plane they
can see the sparkling
jewel of Guanabara bay,
as they land on its
largest island, but then
they have to drive past
the fetid waters of a
sluggish channel and a
number of "favelas" or
shanty towns to get to
the city centre and
tourist areas.
The Canal do Fundao,
between the mainland and
another island which is
the site of Rio de
Janeiro’s main
university, is five
kilometres long, but its
waters have ceased to
flow freely due to the
build-up of sediment
from industrial waste,
rubbish and sewage from
several densely
populated neighbourhoods.
The situation could be
worse. But groups of
local residents are
improvising barriers
right across the rivers
which bring most of the
pollution to the bay,
using steel cables,
wires and branches.
These barriers catch
plastic bottles and
containers, cardboard
and other floating
materials.
These are the Guardiaes
dos Ríos (Guardians of
the Rivers), members of
a project created in
2001 by the Río de
Janeiro city government.
Selected from among the
residents of nearby
low-income communities,
the Guardians earn 520
reals (290 dollars) a
month, collecting
rubbish thrown beside or
into rivers and streams
on a daily basis, and
periodically planting
trees along the banks.
Sometimes they find
mattresses, household
appliances and
furniture, like sofas,
said Sidnei Martins, 47,
the coordinator of a
group of nine workers
cleaning up a stretch of
the Yacaré and
Faria-Timbó rivers, a
few kilometres from
where they flow into the
Canal do Fundao. And in
August and September,
"we pulled out 35 shells
of wrecked cars."
"People in the area are
thoughtless and
irresponsible. They
throw everything into
the river, even aborted
foetuses," Martins told
IPS, spruce in his green
municipal uniform. His
group was formed three
years ago from residents
in the Nelson Mandela
Complex, one of the
local favelas.
"At first we collected a
ton of rubbish every
day," he said. Nearly 90
percent of the waste
they collect is
recyclable, but it is
not reused because there
are no incentives to do
so. One of his former
colleagues, however, now
makes his living selling
rubbish for recycling.
The improvement since
the programme began is
appreciable. "The rivers
don’t flood as
frequently as before,
the mice and rats are
gone and there are fewer
cases of diseases such
as dengue, diarrhoea and
mycosis," said Ana Paula
Ferreira, who left
Martins’ group after two
years and took a
permanent job in a
hospital.
"The river’s still
unsightly, but it’s not
as dirty as it was," she
said.
The programme to clean
up the rivers in the
city planned to employ
640 people from 86
communities this year,
expanding gradually to
960 people from 136
communities in 2012.
"It should be expanded
further, since people
are in need of work, and
because of the
environmental and health
benefits," said
Ferreira, a 31-year-old
mother of three who
lives 30 metres from the
Yacaré river.
LACK OF SANITATION
The Guardians’ work
seeks to prevent urban
disasters. It also
prevents many tons of
waste a day from adding
to the pollution of
Guanabara bay. But it is
only a drop in the
ocean.
Untreated sewage is the
main source of pollution
in the bay. Thirty-five
rivers cross the
metropolitan area of
Rio, which is home to 11
million people, and flow
into the sea, said Dora
Negreiros, the head of
the non-governmental
Guanabara Bay Institute
(IGB).
The Guanabara Bay
Clean-Up Programme (PDBG)
has failed to make
headway against the
sewage problem. Begun in
1995 with a budget of
793 million dollars,
including loans from the
Inter-American
Development Bank (IDB)
and Japan, it was to
finish its work by 1999,
but in fact several
actions are still
pending.
The mud in the Canal do
Fundao is a permanent
reproach to the
programme’s
ineffectiveness, largely
due to lack of
coordination of its
operations.
The main sewage
treatment plant, called
Alegría (Happiness), is
one illustration. It was
designed to process
5,000 litres per second,
but the inflow is only
1,000 litres per second.
Drain systems are needed
to pipe the sewage to
the plant, said Vilmar
Berna, a journalist and
environmentalist who
assisted a parliamentary
investigation of
irregularities in the
PDBG.
Before the programme got
underway, an estimated
20,000 litres per second
of untreated waste water
was pouring into the
bay.
The Alegría plant serves
the city centre and
neighbourhoods near the
Canal do Fundao, where
close to 1.5 million
people live. The state
government of Rio de
Janeiro did not make the
matching investments it
pledged against the IDB
funding, for drainage
installation, complained
Alfredo Sirkis, former
municipal secretary for
the environment and
urban planning.
In the favelas there is
a different problem.
Drain systems were
installed, but not
connected to homes,
because the sanitation
authorities wanted the
residents to do that, as
if they were "like
Swedish citizens in
terms of income, civic
culture and technical
ability," said Berna
with ironic humour.
As a result, there is
open sewage in the
streets and the drain
system is unused.
In her view, the PDBG
was "a great opportunity
lost," because of inept
implementation, at a
time of hopeful
enthusiasm in this city
which hosted the Earth
Summit (United Nations
Conference on
Environment and
Development) in 1992.
But the loss of the
sanitation system was
not all. "The worst
disaster was the
accumulation of
rubbish." Plants for
waste classification and
making organic compost
were built but never
operated, while "plastic
bottles and car tires
are still bobbing about
in the bay," she said.
On balance, she said, it
was a "semi-failure,
because it can be
rectified" with
additional investments
to correct the mistakes.
HOPE FOR THE FUTURE
This positive course of
action is being taken by
the state water and
sewage company CEDAE,
according to its head,
Wagner Victer.
The Alegría plant is now
processing 1,500 litres
per second and in March
this will be stepped up
to 2,500 litres per
second, the maximum
demand for its catchment
area, yet only half its
total capacity, because
it was designed on too
large a scale and will
only be used fully in
the future, he told IPS.
Victer acknowledged the
lack of coordination
between the different
activities of the PDBG,
and said that it would
be "irresponsible" to
propose a second phase
of the programme and
request more external
funding, without first
concluding the delayed
works with local
investment, as
originally conceived.
Now there are signs at
every construction site
announcing its date of
completion, which will
be met, he promised.
Further remedial
measures not originally
included in the
programme will also be
taken, such as dredging
the Canal do Fundao, as
well as the Canal da
Cunha, which carries the
water from several
polluted rivers like the
Yacaré and Faria-Timbó
into the Canal do Fundao.
"That will not totally
clean the bay, but it
will reduce the flow of
organic matter that is
choking it," so that
nature can carry out its
natural cleansing and
regeneration, he said.
"Guanabara bay is a
Brazilian icon, a gift
that makes Rio de
Janeiro stand out" as a
centre of development
and national culture,
and as such, it must be
cleaned up, said the
official, who added that
he is proud to have been
born and lived on Ilha
do Governador, the
island where Rio’s
international airport is
located and 400,000
people live.
In spite of trouble
spots where pollution is
extreme, like the Canal
do Fundao, Guanabara bay
is still teeming with
life under its 381
square kilometres of
surface area, especially
on the northeast side
where an environmental
protection area was
created.
This is what ensures the
survival of 20,000
fisherfolk who live in
five communities around
the bay, in spite of the
reduction of fish
populations due to
pollution, according to
Alex dos Santos, a
leader of the Tubiacanga
Fisherfolk Association
on Ilha do Governador.
Fishing was hit hard by
an oil spill in 2000,
whose damages can still
be seen in the mangroves
along the shore. The
state company
responsible, Petrobras,
has still not
indemnified the
fisherfolk for their
lost income, amounting
to 550,000 dollars,
Santos told IPS. In his
view, fisherfolk have
"the cheapest and most
efficient techniques to
clean the bay, because
no one knows it better
than we do." But first
the sources of chemical
and organic pollution
must be eliminated by
sanitary engineering, he
concluded. |
