{"id":14660,"date":"2014-05-04T18:24:30","date_gmt":"2014-05-04T21:24:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=14660"},"modified":"2016-07-02T00:19:46","modified_gmt":"2016-07-02T03:19:46","slug":"morro-da-providencia-hosts-debate-on-water-and-sanitation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=14660","title":{"rendered":"Morro da Provid\u00eancia Hosts Debate on Water and Sanitation"},"content":{"rendered":"

On\u00a0Tuesday, April 15, a forum focused on water and sanitation was hosted in Morro da Provid\u00eancia<\/a> with six panelists consisting of community members, technical experts, and NGO representatives discussing the challenges of improving water access and sanitation services in favelas. The forum was attended by fourteen international journalists as part of the International Reporting Project<\/a>\u00a0(IRP). Panelists\u00a0answered journalists\u2019 questions in a debate facilitated\u00a0by the IRP and Catalytic Communities<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Meeting\u201cSanitation has an issue of visibility,\u201d said Leona Deckelbaum, campaign coordinator of the nonprofit political mobilization organization Meu Rio<\/a>. \u201cNo politician elected for a four year term wants to take on such a huge problem that takes so long to address.\u201d Deckelbaum said it is much easier for a politician to take credit for a transportation project, such as the cable cars<\/a> in Complexo do Alem\u00e3o and Morro da Provid\u00eancia. The cable car\u00a0in Complexo do Alem\u00e3o opened in June 2011, while the one in Provid\u00eancia remains to be inaugurated, despite its completion more than a year ago.<\/p>\n

In Rio\u2019s largest favela of Rocinha, community residents are resisting<\/a> the city government\u2019s initiative to construct a cable car, emphasizing the urgent priority\u00a0of\u00a0basic\u00a0sanitation services over the proposed transportation. According to Jos\u00e9 Martins de Oliveira, a longtime resident speaking at the debate, Rocinha received the Growth Acceleration Program (PAC)<\/a> in 2006 to upgrade the community\u2019s infrastructure, with participatory meetings initially carried out<\/a>, but only 65% of the projects were carried out.<\/p>\n

\"Water<\/a>President Dilma Rouseff visited Rocinha<\/a> last year and announced the second phase\u00a0of the PAC investments, would be realized in the form of a cable car. Oliveira said the\u00a0community organization Rocinha Sem Fronteiras<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(Rocinha Without Borders) was instrumental in presenting residents\u2019 overwhelming preference for PAC-2 financing and funds from the original PAC, totaling R$1.6 billion, to be invested in a basic sanitation network rather than the cable car.<\/p>\n

The base of Rocinha received sewerage\u00a0services in\u00a0the 1970s, but the remaining 90% of the favela still does not and experiences sporadic water shortages as a result. Residents at the base pay a subsidized monthly rate of R$9.70 per household and R$97.00 for businesses. Pedro da Luz Moreira, president of Rio de Janeiro chapter of the Institute of Brazilian Architects<\/a>\u00a0(IAB-RJ), commented\u00a0that data from the Municipal Health Secretariat shows Rocinha has some of the highest rates of tuberculosis in the state of Rio.<\/p>\n

\"Journalists<\/a>Orlando Rodrigo, a civil engineer from CEDAE <\/a>(State Water and Sewerage Utility) said the company now serves 347,000 favela residents following the installation of Pacifying Police Units (UPPs)<\/a>, but the hillside geography still proves a challenge for bringing services to these communities.<\/p>\n

Deckelbaum pointed to\u00a0another challenge with water and sanitation services in Rio: \u201cCEDAE is the only state-run company that is unregulated.\u201d In 2000, Rio Mayor Cesar Maia withdrew all restrictions and oversight on the utility company. As a result, 60% of Rio pays for sanitation services that it does not receive and a majority of the city\u2019s untreated sewage is dumped into the rivers and oceans.<\/p>\n

Nearly all of Rio\u2019s bodies of water are now highly polluted, with the Guanabara Bay containing fecal matter 75 to 90 times the international limits, said Deckelbaum. Meu Rio started a “Sanitation Summer” campaign<\/a> to raise visibility for this issue, and after three months of weekly demonstrations around the city and the collection of 12,000 signatures, CEDAE’s president Wagner Victer\u00a0declared the company would come under regulation by 2015.<\/p>\n

After the debate, Catalytic Communities’ Theresa Williamson and Provid\u00eancia\u00a0photographer and leader\u00a0Mauricio Hora\u00a0took the journalists on a tour of Provid\u00eancia examining the favela\u2019s 117 year history<\/a> and current water infrastructure. Hora\u00a0said the favela\u2019s proximity to the Porto Maravilha<\/a>\u00a0port revitalization project puts it in a \u201ccomplicated situation.\u201d Though upgrades were planned in the community as part of the halted Morar Carioca<\/a> program, the port redevelopment is largely seen as excluding the community. With the cable car and Morar Carioca, a third of the community was marked for eviction. Removals are currently suspended by a court injunction<\/a>, but residents remain wary. 90% of residents do not pay for water; Hora showed the journalists the system of haphazard pipes providing many households access from the main supply. Collectively organized, each\u00a0pipe serves 20-30 households.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On\u00a0Tuesday, April 15, a forum focused on water and sanitation was hosted in Morro da Provid\u00eancia with six panelists consisting of community members, technical experts, and NGO representatives discussing the challenges of improving water access […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":14672,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[335],"tags":[150,371,1261,11,205,531,632,147,146,144,12,535,373,370],"writer":[1175],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14660","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-policies","8":"tag-cable-car","9":"tag-cedae","10":"tag-central-rio","11":"tag-forced-evictions","12":"tag-growth-acceleration-program-pac","13":"tag-guanabara-bay","14":"tag-meu-rio","15":"tag-morar-carioca","16":"tag-porto-maravilha","17":"tag-morro-da-providencia","18":"tag-rocinha","19":"tag-sanitation","20":"tag-sewerage","21":"tag-water","22":"writer-stefan-johnson"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14660"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=14660"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=14660"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=14660"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=14660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}