{"id":612,"date":"2014-08-22T08:05:00","date_gmt":"2014-08-22T08:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=612"},"modified":"2014-08-22T08:05:00","modified_gmt":"2014-08-22T08:05:00","slug":"severe-drought-hits-brazils-largest-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=612","title":{"rendered":"Severe drought hits Brazil\u2019s largest city"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A severe drought is hitting Brazil\u2019s largest city and thriving economic capital with no end in sight, threatening the municipal water supply to millions of people.<\/p>\n

The water at the Cantareira reservoirs, which supply about nine million of the 20 million people in the metropolitan area, is at its lowest level ever amid the region\u2019s worst drought in 45 years.<\/p>\n

Other reservoirs are also in distress after 15 months of overstretching.<\/p>\n

And more dry weather is forecast.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors have threatened to sue the state government to make it begin rationing water, warning that Sao Paulo is facing \u201cthe worst water crisis ever to hit the region and the collapse of its entire reservoir system.\u201d<\/p>\n

But with Governor Geraldo Alckmin up for reelection in October, his administration has vowed to handle the crisis without rationing the city\u2019s water.<\/p>\n

State water company Sabesp has encouraged consumers to reduce their usage but also downplayed the shortage, saying it will transfer water from other dams and use emergency reserves if necessary.<\/p>\n

It says it has enough supplies to last until March 2015 and has vowed not to implement rationing.<\/p>\n

– Ration by stealth? –<\/p>\n

But many Sabesp customers suspect their supplies are already being rationed.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast week we went four whole days without water,\u201d said Adilson Becerra, a 36-year-old salesman who lives in the southern suburbs.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom one day to the next we were left without water. Nobody told us anything. From Thursday to Sunday, not a single drop came out of the tap.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a recent survey by newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo, 46 percent of Sao Paulo residents reported having their water cut at least once so far this month, up from 35 percent in the previous survey in May.<\/p>\n

The region\u2019s rainy season is the southern hemisphere summer, from October to March. But the period was exceptionally dry in 2013-2014.<\/p>\n

And another dry year is forecast for 2014-2015.<\/p>\n

To deal with the drought, Sabesp has begun using water from the bottom of its reservoirs \u2014 so-called \u201cdead volume\u201d \u2014 but prosecutors told the company this posed a health risk.<\/p>\n

The lack of rain has also hit Brazil\u2019s main source of power, hydroelectric dams, forcing officials to turn to more expensive and more polluting thermoelectric plants.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe situation is critical for both potable water and energy. The ideal thing would be for people to reduce their water consumption,\u201d said Cristopher Vlavianos, the president of independent energy distributor Comerc.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A severe drought is hitting Brazil\u2019s largest city and thriving economic capital with no end in sight, threatening the municipal water supply to millions of people. The water at the Cantareira reservoirs, which supply about nine million of the 20 million people in the metropolitan area, is at its lowest level ever amid the region\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4oswh-9S","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=612"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":613,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions\/613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}