{"id":16281,"date":"2016-06-07T08:00:22","date_gmt":"2016-06-07T15:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/when-rio-fails-sister-city-shows-cleanup-is-possible\/"},"modified":"2016-06-07T08:00:22","modified_gmt":"2016-06-07T15:00:22","slug":"when-rio-fails-sister-city-shows-cleanup-is-possible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/sports\/when-rio-fails-sister-city-shows-cleanup-is-possible\/","title":{"rendered":"When Rio fails, sister city shows cleanup is possible"},"content":{"rendered":"

NITEROI, Brazil <\/strong>\u2014 With thousands of liters of raw human sewage pouring into the ocean every second from Rio de Janeiro, August\u2019s Olympic Games have thrust into the global spotlight the city\u2019s spectacular failure to clean up its waterways and world famous beaches. But just across the Guanabara Bay from Rio, the sister city of Niteroi is showing that a real cleanup is possible.<\/p>\n

In Niteroi, 95 percent of sewage is treated and authorities say they are on track for 100 percent within a year, even though Rio\u2019s failure to do its part means that sludge still flows in from across the bay. Rio has not only broken promises made to fix its sewage problem in time for the upcoming Summer Games, but the state has been downplaying expectations, even suggesting it might be 2035 before a full cleanup happens.<\/p>\n

Niteroi\u2019s success underscores key factors that stand in stark contrast to Rio: privatization of sewage management, major investment in infrastructure and a high level of accountability and collaboration between the city government and the utility to define targets and meet them.<\/p>\n

In Rio\u2019s Olympic bid document seven years ago, authorities pledged that an extensive cleanup \u2014 which included collecting and treating 80 percent of the city\u2019s sewage \u2014 would be one of the games\u2019 enduring legacies, but it simply never happened: An ongoing study commissioned by The Associated Press has shown that rowers, sailors and marathon swimmers will be exposed to waters so filthy they\u2019re roughly equivalent to raw sewage.<\/p>\n

Why did Niteroi succeed while Rio failed? For starters, it doesn\u2019t help that Jorge Briard, president of the Rio state-owned utility known by its Portuguese acronym as CEDAE, says he isn\u2019t sure where those Olympic bid targets came from.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2019Why didn\u2019t you achieve the 80 percent that was stated?\u2019 That\u2019s the recurring question,\u201d Briard said in an interview with The Associated Press. \u201cI always say, \u2018I don\u2019t know where the 80 percent came from. Certainly not from CEDAE. Here, no one mentioned 80 percent.\u2019 Mentioning percentages is something very dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n

The situation in Niteroi in 1997, when a private sanitation company won a tender to manage the city\u2019s sewage system, was even worse than Rio\u2019s is now. About a third of the population didn\u2019t have running water and more than two-thirds of sewage went untreated.<\/p>\n

Over the past 15 years, the city has rolled out new treatment plants and hooked up hundreds of thousands of residents, whose waste flowed untreated into the area streams and rivers that run into the bay.<\/p>\n

\u201cCity Hall got to the point where it had no other alternative but to look to the private sector for someone who could solve the big problems,\u201d said Carlos Henrique da Cruz Lima, planning director at Aguas do Brasil, the sanitation company.<\/p>\n

It was a bold move. Similar situations existed \u2014 and continue to exist \u2014 throughout Brazil, and public utilities still outnumber private ones here by around nine to one. Until a decade ago, the legislative framework for private utilities was murky, leading to a legal battle over whether Aguas do Brasil had the right to operate in Niteroi. The case dragged on for two years before Brazil\u2019s highest court ruled in the company\u2019s favor.<\/p>\n

The company has invested $141 million to expand the city\u2019s then-sole sewage treatment plant and build another eight units \u2014 as well as, crucially, to lay the pipes to transport the sewage.<\/p>\n

With an estimated 95 percent of residents now on the sewerage grid, Niteroi ranks No. 5 nationally in terms of sewage treatment, according to basic sanitation watchdog Trata Brasil. The plan is to reach universal coverage, bringing the remaining 30,000 to 35,000 residents onto the grid within the coming year, Lima said.<\/p>\n

By comparison, Rio treats about half its sewage \u2014 despite multibillion dollar cleanup efforts and broken promises stretching back more than two decades.<\/p>\n

Sanitation experts say Niteroi has the advantage of being relatively small. The population is around 500,000 people, compared with Rio\u2019s 6 million.<\/p>\n

That dynamic makes oversight and enforcement easer, cutting down on corruption in building contracts and management, long a scourge in Latin America\u2019s most populous nation.<\/p>\n

Amid sharp criticism of the failed cleanup efforts in Rio and the ongoing AP investigation, local officials have been dialing down expectations.<\/p>\n

Last year, Rio Governor Luiz Fernando Pezao acknowledged \u201cerrors\u201d had been made in the bay cleanup. At an event at the governor\u2019s palace days after the July 30 publication of the AP investigation, an official with the latest cleanup task force pushed the target date back to 2035. Pezao is currently on medical leave and the governor\u2019s office didn\u2019t respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

An independent study commissioned by The Associated Press over the last year has revealed alarmingly high levels of viruses and sometimes bacteria from human sewage in the bay as well as the city\u2019s other Olympic waterways. A risk assessment based on the AP data found those who ingest three teaspoons of water have a 99 percent chance of being infected by a virus, raising alarm among some elite athletes, although whether they actually fall sick depends on many factors. Several athletes fell ill while training last year.<\/p>\n

The consequences of sewage exposure are more serious for the broad swath of Brazil\u2019s population for which regular exposure to untreated waste is an inevitable fact of life. Public health experts say children exposed to sewage fall ill more often, are less likely to attend school regularly and fully develop intellectually, and ultimately end up getting significantly lower-paying jobs than those from similar socio-economic backgrounds who grow up with basic sanitation.<\/p>\n

Niteroi\u2019s vice-mayor, Axel Grael, said the private company\u2019s accountability has been a key factor in the sewage treatment, with specific quality control standards spelled out in the contract.<\/p>\n

\u201cPublic utilities here have shown themselves to be inefficient, unable to make the needed investments at the speed the population demands,\u201d said Grael, an accomplished sailor whose two brothers are both Olympic medalists in the sport.<\/p>\n

Briard, Rio\u2019s utility president, rejected arguments that his company had failed. He said ongoing infrastructure investment had boosted treatment of the city\u2019s sewage from a lackluster 11 percent in 2007 to 51 percent currently.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a big advance,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Briard said CEDAE\u2019s goal was to get to 90 percent treatment, but declined to provide a timeline.<\/p>\n

\u201cWater, I sometimes joke, we could even put on the moon,\u201d he said. \u201cBut sewage is complex engineering.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes has been less forgiving. While he points to ongoing improvements \u2014 last week he inaugurated a new sewage treatment plant \u2014 he says the city missed a great opportunity to modernize.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a shame. And not just for the city of Rio de Janeiro,\u201d Paes said last week. \u201cIt\u2019s a national shame.\u201d<\/p>\n

Briard downplayed the accomplishments in Niteroi, saying Aguas do Brazil piggybacked on work already down by CEDAE, such as development of a subterranean network of pipes. He also said that for nearly a decade the company didn\u2019t pay CEDAE for the water it provided, allowing it to make investments that wouldn\u2019t have been possible otherwise.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t pay for your raw material, or if you pay very little for it, it\u2019s clear your chance of being a success is very high,\u201d Briard said.<\/p>\n

Global experts say that privatization is not always a solution. While historically public water utilities have tended to be hampered by inertia and slow to adopt new technologies, today some of the best sewage facilities in the world are public, said Kartik Chandran, a professor of engineering at Columbia University.<\/p>\n

He pointed to those serving New York City, Washington D.C., Los Angeles and Seattle as leaders in the U.S., adding that stringent regulations and strict enforcement are the basis of success.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at regulations in developing countries, they are mostly the same as in the U.S. and Europe \u2014 and perhaps even adapted from that legislation \u2014 but there\u2019s hardly any enforcement,\u201d Chandran said.<\/p>\n

In April, police investigators conducted a sting at several CEDAE waste treatment plants, collecting samples aimed at determining whether the facilities are just pumping raw sewage through and dumping it. Depending on the results, both CEDAE and its top executives could be handed pollution and larceny charges, the lead investigator said at the time.<\/p>\n

Mario Moscatelli, a biologist who for decades has been the most visible face of the fight to clean up Rio\u2019s waterways, doesn\u2019t believe the authorities ever intended to make good on their Olympic promises.<\/p>\n

Not providing basic sanitation has become big business, he said, referring to the allegation the company charges for services it doesn\u2019t perform. \u201cIt\u2019s a big official scam.\u201d<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s affecting more than Rio.<\/p>\n

While Niteroi has cleaned up its own mess, sludge is still flowing across the bay from its sister city. The two are separated by about 5 miles of bay water.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been getting cleaner,\u201d said Renan Taboada, a 19-year-old from Niteroi, as he played soccer on the city\u2019s showcase Icarai Beach, \u201cbut it\u2019s definitely not as clean as we would like.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NITEROI, Brazil \u2014 With thousands of liters of raw human sewage pouring into the ocean every second from Rio de Janeiro, August\u2019s Olympic Games have thrust into the global spotlight<\/a> the city\u2019s spectacular failure to clean up its waterways and world famous beaches. But just across the Guanabara Bay from Rio, the sister city of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-16281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16281"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=16281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}