The opportunity to give a decisive push to the cleanup of
Rio’s emblematic Guanabara Bay and its lagoons has been lost. The drive against
waterborne pollution was part of the proposal which won the city the right to
host the 2016 Summer Olympics.
This failure may hardly register in the awareness of
residents and visitors, given the higher visibility of the urban transport
projects and the revitalisation of Rio’s central district.
What happened confirms the national tradition of giving
sanitation low priority on the government agenda. So far only half the
Brazilian population has access to piped water, and only a small proportion of
transported water is treated.
“The environment pays no taxes and neither does it vote,
therefore it does not command the attention of our political leaders nor of
society as a whole,” complained biologist Mario Moscatelli, a well-known water
issues activist in Rio de Janeiro.
The Olympic Park, which is at the heart of the Games of the
XXXI Olympiad, was built on the west side of the city on the shores of
Jacarepaguá lagoon, yet not even this body of water has been adequately
treated. Filthy water from rivers and streams continues to flow into it all the
time, Moscatelli told IPS.
Most of the foreign Olympic athletes and spectators from
abroad will arrive in Rio at Antonio Carlos Jobim international airport, also
known as Galeão. Planes touch down here on the edge of one of the most polluted
parts of Guanabara bay, although visitors may not realise it.
The airport , on the western tip of Ilha do Governador
(Governador Island), which was home to 212,754 people in 2010 according to the
official census, is close to canals
taking untreated effluent and rubbish from millions of people living on
the mainland, brought by rivers that are little more than open sewers.
Fundão canal can be glimpsed from the southbound highway
towards the city centre. It is full of raw sewage and bad smells in spite of
recent dredging, because it is still connected to the polluted Cunha canal.
Five rivers converge in the Cunha canal after crossing
densely populated areas including several “favelas” (shanty towns) and
industrial zones.
North of Galeao airport, the fishing village of Tubiacanga
illustrates the ecological disaster in Guanabara Bay, which has a surface area
of 412 square kilometres and stretches from Copacabana beach in the west to
Itaipu (Niterói) in the east.
At the narrowest point in the channel between Ilha do
Governador and the adjacent mainland city of Duque de Caxias, “there used to be
a depth of seven or eight metres; but now at low tide you can walk along with
the water only chest-high,” 66-year-old Souza, who has lived in Tubiacanga for
two-thirds of his life, told IPS.
Landfills, silting by rivers and rubbish tipping have all
reduced the depth of the bay, he said.
“Tubiacanga is at a meeting point of dirty water from tides
rising at the bay entrance, from several canals including Fundão, and from
rivers. Sediments and rubbish pile up in front of our village,” where the white
sandy beach has become a quagmire and rubbish dump over the past few decades,
Souza complained.
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| Guanabara Bay |
Guanabara bay receives 90 tonnes daily of rubbish and 18,000
litres per second of untreated waste water, mainly via the 55 rivers and canals
that flow into it, according to Sergio Ricardo de Lima, an ecologist and
founder of the Bahia Viva (Living Bay) movement.
Rio’s Olympic bid announced a target of cleaning up 80
percent of the effluents reaching the bay. The actual proportion achieved was
55 percent, Sports Minister Leonardo Picciani said at a press conference with
foreign journalists on July 7.
“I only believe in what I see: out of the 55 rivers in the
basin, 49 have become lifeless sewers,” said Moscatelli, voicing the scepticism
of environmentalists.
The 80 percent target was not realistic; completely
decontaminating the bay would require 25 to 30 years and sanitation investments
equivalent to six billion dollars, André Correa, environment secretary for the
state of Rio de Janeiro, admitted on July 20 at the inauguration of an “eco
barrier” on the river Merití, one of the polluting waterways.
The barriers are floating interconnected booms that are an emergency
measure to ensure that aquatic Olympic sports can take place in some parts in
the bay. Trash scooping vessels or “eco boats” collect the floating debris that
accumulates against them and send it for recycling.
Seventeen eco barriers have been promised, but these will be
woefully inadequate, and in any case they should be anchored where floating
garbage is most concentrated, like Tubiacanga, not close to the Guanabara Bay
entrance where water sports will be held, Lima complained.
The barrier in the Merití River is suitably placed, in
Lima’s view, but it is “palliative action only.” The real solution is to
promote selective garbage collection at source, that is, in households, shops
and industries, and recycle as much solid waste as possible, as stipulated by a
2010 law.
“At present only one percent of the garbage produced in the
Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Region (which has a population of 12 million) is
recycled,” Lima said.
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| Workers remove garbage collected by floating waste barriers at the Meriti polluted river that flows into the Guanabara bay, in Rio de Janeiro |
Cleaning up Guanabara Bay is a longstanding ambition. It was
the goal of a project begun in 1995 that has already cost the equivalent of
three billion dollars at the current exchange rate, but that has not prevented
environmental deterioration of local beaches and water resources.
Eight wastewater treatment stations were built or expanded
to improve water quality. However, they have always operated well below
capacity, because the main drains needed to collect wastewater and deliver it
to the treatment stations have never been built, according to Lima.
Pollution of the bay is exacerbated by oil spills. There is
a refinery and petrochemical hub on the banks of the lagoon in Duque de Caxias;
in addition, all along the Tubiacanga waterfront the bay is increasingly
crisscrossed by pipes carrying crude oil, refinery sub products and natural
gas.
The effects of a large oil spill in January 2000 are still
felt today. It had a direct impact on Tubiacanga and on the fish catch.
“We fisher folk are the ones who suffer most from the
consequences of pollution, and who best know the bay; but we are not listened
to, we are penned in and threatened with extinction,” said Souza dos Santos,
who is encouraging his four sons to take up trades other than fishing.
SOURCE IPS
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