{"id":6587,"date":"2015-03-17T18:18:53","date_gmt":"2015-03-17T23:18:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=6587"},"modified":"2015-03-17T18:18:53","modified_gmt":"2015-03-17T23:18:53","slug":"lessons-from-sao-paulos-water-shortage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=6587","title":{"rendered":"Lessons from S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s Water Shortage"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"title entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/voices.nationalgeographic.com\/2015\/03\/13\/lessons-from-sao-paulos-water-shortage\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Lessons from S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s Water Shortage<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>It\u2019s getting harder and harder to separate nature\u2019s role in disasters from our own, and the dire water predicament confronting S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil, is no exception.<\/p>\n<p>But as with the ongoing\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalgeographic.com\/west-snow-fail\/\">drought in California<\/a>, there are important lessons from S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s grim situation that can help us prepare for the \u201cnew normal\u201d that\u2019s unfolding.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s indisputable that S\u00e3o Paulo, the economic heartbeat of Brazil, is in trouble. The megacity of 20 million people is suffering its worst drought in eight decades. The five reservoirs in the Cantareira system, which provides nearly half the city\u2019s drinking water, are at a dangerously low 13 percent of capacity. That\u2019s up from even lower levels thanks to some recent rains, and while more precipitation could arrive in the coming weeks, historically the driest period of the year is April through September, just around the corner.<\/p>\n<p>Some S\u00e3o Paulo residents have gone without tap water for days at a time. Others have fled the city, creating a new brand of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2015\/03\/10\/392014833\/sao-paulo-s-drought-pits-legitimate-prospectors-against-wildcatters\">\u201cwater refugees.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<p>As Brazil gears up to host the 2016 summer Olympics, businesses are suffering from the lack of water. Economists say the drought could shave 2% off of Brazil\u2019s GDP.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, a \u201cclandestine drilling fever\u201d is taking place across the city, according to an NPR<a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2015\/03\/10\/392014833\/sao-paulo-s-drought-pits-legitimate-prospectors-against-wildcatters\">report<\/a>. As people and businesses worry about rationing, they are drilling their own wells to access groundwater. This unregulated, wildcat drilling threatens to pollute underground supplies, worsening the drought\u2019s long-term impact and raising public health risks.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lessons from S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s Water Shortage It\u2019s getting harder and harder to separate nature\u2019s role in disasters from our own, and the dire water predicament confronting S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil, is no exception. But as with the ongoing\u00a0drought in California, there are important lessons from S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s grim situation that can help us prepare for the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[90,101,220,699,866,2060],"class_list":["post-6587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-brazil","tag-california","tag-drought","tag-sao-paulo","tag-water","tag-water-shortage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6587"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6588,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6587\/revisions\/6588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}