More people . . .

Posted on Posted in Blog

 

A major part of Rio’s winning Olympic bid was a plan to capture and treat 80 percent of the sewage that flows into Guanabara Bay, something organizers now admit will not happen — certainly not by August, if ever.

Guanabara Bay was discovered by Portuguese explorers on Jan. 1, 1502 — hence the name Rio de Janeiro, or River of January, for the settlement that grew on its shores. Pollution problems are relatively new, largely beginning with oil refineries in the 1950s. Today’s issues are mostly attributed to unchecked growth over the past couple of generations, including in the favelas, or slums. Sanitation and other infrastructure could not keep up.

It begins as a clear trickle, pure and cool, clean and drinkable, deep under the canopy of the mountain jungles that surround Rio de Janeiro.

Over 20 miles, widening as it goes, the Rio Sarapuí fills with water from tributaries and with the untreated waste and unwanted garbage of millions who live along its path. 

*“People are standing on the edge of the bay, looking at the bay, and saying: ‘Oh, the bay is so dirty. The bay is so polluted,’” said Paulo Rosman, a professor of oceanography and coastal engineering at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. “O.K., stop. Turn 180 degrees. That’s the problem. Not the bay. The bay is just a consequence.”

I think the key words here are ‘unchecked growth’. But is who is there to check it? Who could check it? There is no government agency in charge of checking growth, only keeping track of it.

Rolando is right guys, and so is Mr. Rosman. There’s just too many of us, and no one I can think of has a solution even remotely workable, and if workable, certainly not acceptable: not by the church, not by the very communities it would be supposedly be “checking” and, I imagine, helping.

What next? I don’t know. In the short term, more people I guess, especially in parts of the world where they can’t handle the ones they’ve got. Still, there will be more . . .

mt

11 thoughts on “More people . . .

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