Water management in the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo
The sprawling Metropolitan Region of São Paulo (MRSP) with close to 20 million people is the seventh most populous urban area in the world[1] and the economic, financial and technical hub of Brazil.
The 7,917 hectares (19,560 acres) Cantareira State Park, created in 1962, protects a large part of the metropolitan São Paulo water supply.
Among the first environmental measures was the state headwater protection law, which prohibited high-density residential occupation in 53% of Greater São Paulo.
Numerous initiatives were subsequently launched, such as the R$200 million Córrego Limpo (Clean Stream) program started by São Paulo municipality in 2007.
[6] Despite these substantial efforts, it has not been possible to entirely clean up the river because new source of pollution emerged in the rapidly growing metropolitan area as older ones were brought under control.
[3] One of the main sources of water pollution in the MRSP is the slums around the Guarapiranga and Billings river basins because these neighborhoods often lack adequate sanitation services.
The direct discharge of raw sewage into the waterbodies has caused eutrophication in both reservoirs as well as the Baixo Cotia, Biritiba and Ribeirão dos Cristais Rivers.
[6] The São Paulo Council on Water Resources has defined watersheds as being in critical condition when the relationship between demand and availability surpasses 50 percent.
Its main problems are uncontrolled urban expansion with no basic sanitation and widespread use of the basin for economic activities, threatening natural water production.
It is one of the biggest metropolitan water reservoirs in the world, but due to inadequate urban planning and the lack of wastewater treatment in the MRSP, it became heavily polluted during the 1980s.
[20] Both the Guarapiranga and the Billings basin face serious water quality issues due to the extensive presence of urban slums with no sewage or solid waste collection system.
The banks of the basins were originally designated as environmentally protected areas, but they were quickly invaded by poor immigrants to the metropolitan region in search of work and opportunity.
These highly unequal and disparate types of urban occupancy have limited or no basic urban infrastructure, and people live in shacks built on steep hillsides, in valley bottoms, flood-prone areas, flood plains or perched along the banks of rivers and streams, with limited or no access to proper sanitation.
Since 1998, a Macro-Drainage Plan for the Alto-Tiete basin has been under preparation in order to diagnose existing and expected problems and devise solutions from a technical, economic and environmental perspective.
[3] There have been many joint efforts by Brazilian authorities, often with the support of multilateral lending agencies, to tackle the water and poverty challenges in the MRSP.
Pollution control projects provide sewerage as well as wastewater treatment, green areas, and promote community awareness.
Sabesp has approached KfW (Germany), AFD (French Development Agency), CAF (Corporação Andina de Fomento), IFC, besides commercial banks such as Morgan Stanley, Santander, Itaú, Banco do Brasil, Bradesco, HSBC, and Caixa Economica for financing.
[25] Sabesp has implemented a ten-year program (2008–2018) to control and reduce non-revenue water by enhancing infrastructure, combating fraud and illegal connections, and improving staff training.
Federal Resolution 54/2005 of the National Council of Water Resources states that direct non-potable treated wastewater can be used in landscape irrigation, washing public streets, fire fighting, agricultural production, industrial activities and environmental projects.
Currently a draft resolution is under consideration by the São Paulo Secretariats of Health, Environment, and Water Supply, Sanitation and Energy on urban wastewater reuse; however, as of 2009 the State had no legal framework on this issue.
Only the municipality of São Paulo, within the MRSP, had issued its own regulations mandating the use of reused water for the washing of streets, sidewalks and plazas and irrigating parks, gardens and sports fields.
It provides 1 cubic meter per second to the petrochemical complex Capuava in Mauá in the eastern part of the metropolitan region through a 17 km pipeline.
As part of the program the Extrema municipality in the Piracicaba watershed directs funds collected from water users to pay farmers and ranchers who protect or restore riparian forests on their lands.
In the MRSP, joint requests for PAC resources have been made to the Federal Government by the State Secretariat for Water and Energy, the São Paulo Municipal Government and the State Housing and Urban Development Company (CDHU – with particular emphasis on slum and urban upgrading, expansion of solid waste collection systems and resettlement of families.
[6] Programa Córrego Limpo is a R$200 million Sabesp-Municipality of São Paulo program initiated in 2007 to remove wastewater pollution from 100 urban streams throughout the MRSP.
The purpose of the project is to increase the rate of wastewater collection and treatment in the MRSP and thereby to restore the water quality of the Tiete river.
[34] In December 2010 the IDB approved another US$115.7m loan to support a US$200m project "to recover the environmental and social function of the Alto Río Tiete", with investments in São Paulo, Guaraulhos, Itaquaquecetuba, Bridle, Suzano, Mogi das Cruzes, Biritiba-Mirim and Salesopolis.
[36] Completed projects: Tietê River Decontamination (1999–2008)[37] – A US$1.5 billion Sabesp program financed by the Inter-American Development Bank and BNDES to expand wastewater collection and treatment in MRSP – with a focus on the wastewater system's trunk infrastructure and treatment works, as well as service expansion in formal areas of the city.
[4] It does so by supporting "institutional capacity building", urban upgrading, environmental protection and recovery, as well as "integrated water supply and sanitation".
Specifically, the project will include reforestation, the creation of green spaces and protected areas, the "urbanization of slums", housing for resettled people, water quality monitoring, environmental education, the preparation of land use laws as well as "studies on metropolitan governance".
