In São Paolo, water consumption remains high, rainwater is at a record low and, not too suddenly, the city is facing its worst hydric crisis in the last 80 years. The Cantareira — the reservoir system that supplies 8.8 million people in the greater São Paulo city area — is running at negative 24.1%. The useful volume of the reservoir was entirely exhausted in May and now all that is left is water from reserve tanks below the level of the hydraulic gates, referred to as the dead volume. In May, SABESP, the state-owned company that administers water in São Paulo State, started pumping from the reservoir’s dead volume to postpone an inevitable water war. But water from these tanks is also going quickly. They are nearing rock bottom, and it is too late to invoke the rain deities. Brazil’s wealthiest and most populous city center may well run out of water by April 2015.
Since the beginning of the crisis in 2014, the governor of São Paulo, Geraldo Alckmin, also from the PSDB, has been blaming the historically low levels of rain for the deplorable situation of São Paulo’s reservoirs. Indeed, the droughts have exacerbated the crisis. But this is not a climatic issue. It’s not even a technical issue, for that matter, because SABESP and the administration have the knowledge and capital to handle it. It is an issue of poor management and perverse politics. While political paralysis regarding environmental issues is quite common, the inertia seen in this case can only be explained in the context of massive administrative failures and an impetus to avoid negative coverage amid election year.
Despite early warning signs and full knowledge of the consequences of their inaction, the administration did not take any preemptive steps to reduce the risks of a water shortage. The first premonitions of this shortage surfaced in 2004, when SABESP renewed its contract to administer water in the state. The company then became aware of the fact that, in order to meet the demand, they would need to increase the Cantareira’s storage capacity and work towards reducing São Paulo’s dependence on such a system. This was so clear at the time that the condition for renewing the contract was that SABESP would need to present an investment plan within two years. So weak was the plan that SABESP presented that it was refused, yet strangely SABESP kept its license. São Paulo became increasingly dependent on this single reservoir system, even when administrators knew that if there were to ever be a shortage of water in its tanks, chaos would ensue.
Predictions about the current water crisis were also made in 2009 in a strategic study plan during the administration of former governor José Serra, of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB). The document, entitled “Environmental Scenarios 2020,” was produced by the State Secretariat on the Environment in collaboration with another 200 experts. It correctly predicted periods of extreme rain, as occurred in 2010-11, followed by a period of extreme drought in 2014. By 2015, the report predicted the drought would reach the three rivers which supply the Cantareira reservoir system, as it eventually did. The document additionally foresaw a new crisis in 2018, in which both superficial and subterranean waters would be affected. In its projections, the document also set forth a plan of action and guidelines to prevent their most pessimistic scenarios from concretizing.
Yet because the government waited until the rains were already over to start giving the issue due attention, we have reached a point of no return — São Paulo will run out of water before the government can finish any substantive initiatives to stabilize the situation. Notwithstanding the lack of appropriate planning involved leading up to the current drought, once it became clear that the water of the Cantareira would end within a year, the government still postponed making policy decisions.
Geraldo Alckmin, the governor of São Paulo, has been deliberately downplaying the crisis and postponing the implementation of even extremely necessary and effective short-term measures to address it. Since the end of last year, those who save 20% of their water have started to get discounts on their bills. Rather than announcing this innocuous measure early on to encourage saving, Alckmin counterproductively announced the measure in November, after securing his reelection.
After the bonus for saving was implemented, more disruptive measures continued to be put off to the last minute. Only last week, fines began to be applied to those whose monthly consumptions surpassed their average monthly consumption between February 2013 and January 2014. Alckmin is still waiting to call the shots on a rotational program — in which 4 or 5 days of water supply would be followed by 2 days without water. Rationing and rotating water supplies is far from a decent solution — it generates a chain of other problems, including water refugees. Meanwhile, the new president of SABESP, Jelson Kelman, has admitted that the Cantareira system may dry up in March. While the approach has been strictly palliative, if implemented earlier it could have brought consumption patterns to a more sustainable level. Moreover, these are measures that also require planning and equipment. Even if the government were to announce a rotating program today, it would take SABESP some time to install the necessary valves in the network to avoid wasting more water in the process.
The anti-crisis committee integrated by the National Water Agency (ANA) and by the Department of Water and Electric Energy of Sao Paulo (DAEE) that was to monitor the crisis and publish recommendations also went on extensive periods of silence leaving policies in limbo. Strangely, and still entirely in line with Alckmin’s determination to obfuscate the real situation at the Cantareira, there was absolute silence in the media regarding the potential collapse of the water provision system before the crisis was well underway.
Behind the scenes, SABESP was tampering with water pressure and at times even cutting water supplies overnight without warning or permission. On February 2 of this year, technicians at the company revealed that in fact certain regions have been under rationing for six months already, even though the government has yet to issue an official rationing order and the practice therefore remains illegal. SABESP has denied rationing water, attributing any extemporaneous shortages to an intensification of their water pressure reduction program, which could lead to shortages affecting a maximum of 1% of the population. Much to the contrary of what SABESP claims, independent research and polls show that since October 2014, 35 municipalities have been under rationing and 5 million people have been forced to resort to alternative, and often hazardous, forms of attaining water. Alckmin, meanwhile, has vacillated back and forth between approving and disapproving of the pressure reduction, but has far from condemned it.
Perhaps the greatest problem is that, in all of its inertia, government efforts to invest in short and long-term solutions to the water supply problem have been stalled. Alckmin announced last week a package of eight emergency constructions to capture water from other basins and to increase the capacities of near-proximity reservoirs. These would cover part of the deficit left by Cantareira and, at least, postpone the inevitable: rationing or rotating of the water supply. What he failed to announce was a timetable for the start and end of the construction works, as well as the budget. Delays in emergency construction measures such as these likely indicate that the new infrastructure will take months to complete, if not years. As per long-term solutions, there has been little attention given to improving the networks or to universal sanitation, all of which could help reduce waste. According to a hydrology and hydro resources professor at Campinas University, the networks in the northern and central regions of the capital are from the 1980s and should have been replaced long ago to avoid leaks and, with that, loss of water.
In the past decades, with the rapid and mostly unplanned expansion of the São Paulo metropolitan area, pollution and waste became the real challenges of this water crisis, making the alternative solutions to the climatic hardships in the Cantareira region naturally unviable. Alckmin and the SABESP directory know this all too well, yet act as if they are relying on faith to find a solution to this problem. What will it take to get a full-hearted response? It better come soon because, if nothing changes, the next crisis on the line for São Paulo and the Southeast region will be an electricity one, considering 80% of it is generated by hydropower.