{"id":34157,"date":"2016-11-26T08:33:07","date_gmt":"2016-11-26T11:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=34157"},"modified":"2017-11-30T16:29:03","modified_gmt":"2017-11-30T19:29:03","slug":"sarapui-fishermen-blocked-from-reaching-work-by-olympics-eco-barriers-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=34157","title":{"rendered":"Sarapu\u00ed Fishermen Blocked from Reaching Work by Olympics Eco-Barriers [VIDEO]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Members of the Sarapu\u00ed fishing community in the Baixada Fluminense<\/a>\u00a0in Greater Rio<\/a> find themselves in precarious economic conditions as an eco-barrier strung across the Sarapu\u00ed River has been blocking them from reaching their fishing grounds since July. Rio\u2019s state government <\/span>installed<\/span><\/a> 17 eco-barriers in rivers throughout the Baixada Fluminense as part of a <\/span>promise<\/span><\/a> to <\/span>depollute<\/span><\/a> 80% of the Guanabara Bay<\/a> in time for the 2016 Olympic Games<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The barriers consist of plastic tubes attached to a steel wire intended to prevent floating trash from reaching the Bay. Unfortunately, fishing boats can\u2019t pass over the eco-barriers\u2019 floating plastic grid and the masses of gig\u00f3ia<\/em>\u00a0marine plants that float up against them. Fishermen who dock their boats behind these barriers no longer know if they will be able to reach work or return home on any given day.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9 Vitor do Nascimento Raimundo and Gilciney Lopes, who have sustained themselves fishing the Sarapu\u00ed River all their lives, find themselves forced to wait hours every morning for the tide to rise and the plants to float away, if they make it across at all. \u201cHow are we supposed to sustain ourselves if we can\u2019t come and go? I support four children, how will I pay my bills?\u201d asks Raimundo.<\/p>\n

All this for eco-barriers that catch only 8.8% of the trash that floats into the bay, an effort journalist Emanuel Alencar says is \u201clike drying ice\u201d in his recently<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>released<\/span> book <\/span>Baia de Guanabara: Descaso e\u00a0Resist\u00eancia<\/a> <\/span><\/i>(Guanabara Bay: Neglect and Resistance)<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Sarapu\u00ed River fishing community didn\u2019t always have to travel to the Guanabara Bay to fish. Due to high levels of pollution, fishing populations have been devastated. Fishermen must row further to healthier waters near mangroves or Ilha do Governador<\/a>. \u201cThe situation today is regrettable,\u201d says Raimundo. \u201cCrabs can\u2019t survive here in the river anymore.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Lopes says the Gas Verde S\/A<\/a> dealership has clandestinely continued to release liquid gas and slurry directly into the Sarapu\u00ed River despite a mandate from authorities not to do so. Other culprits polluting the river include the Bayer factory which directs\u00a0its waste into the Sarapu\u00ed River<\/a>, the Petroflex rubber factory in Duque de Caxias<\/a>, the Gericin\u00f3<\/a>\u00a0landfill and the continued release of untreated slurry from Jardim Gramacho<\/a>, an inactive landfill which was once the largest in Latin America. The Sarapu\u00ed River has earned the nickname \u201criver of paint<\/a>\u201d due to the past release of dye from the Bangu fabric factory into its waters. In addition to industrial waste, 18,000\u00a0liters of untreated sewage flow into Rio\u2019s watershed per second.<\/p>\n

\"Pollution<\/a><\/p>\n

Raimundo and Lopes are tired of witnessing the environmental abuses which continue to devastate their ability to support themselves as artisanal fishermen. They are still fighting to receive<\/span> indemnities<\/span><\/a> after the Petrobras oil spill<\/a> of 2000 from the Duque de Caxias oil refinery, which released 1.3 million liters of oil into Rio\u2019s watershed. The Rio de Janeiro Federation of Fishermen (Feperj) won restitution for the 12,000 fishermen whose livelihoods were harmed by the spill, yet Petrobras has never paid the indemnities.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey were abandoned by the State,\u201d says Elza Maimone, the lawyer who has been assisting the fishermen in their continued fight for the Petrobras indemnities pro-bono. \u201cPoliticians use the fishermen when they want to win an election<\/a>, then disappear.\u201d One such false promise was the <\/span>Sarapu\u00ed ETE<\/span><\/a>, a R$37 million sewage treatment center inaugurated under Governor Garotinho in 2000 that has never entered into full operation due to a lack of collectors and nets, according to Alencar.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Raimundo<\/a><\/p>\n

Lopes reads the current eco-barrier catastrophe as just another time Rio\u2019s government has failed the fishing community:<\/p>\n

“What we have here is a job badly done on the part of the inspectors and the authorities.\u00a0<\/span>That they permitted work like this to be done in the Sarapu\u00ed River is not something you will see shown in the international and national news. They put on the Olympics trying to show the bright side of our country, forgetting that behind the pretty picture there is a community suffering for the sake of keeping up appearances.”<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lopes suggests a simple solution: moving the eco-barrier further up the river, where it would not block their path. \u201cNo one consulted the fishermen,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Watch our video on the Sarapu\u00ed fishermen’s situation:<\/h3>\n