Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumWorst Drought On Record Pounds Brazil's Already-Arid Northeast
Last edited Sat Feb 18, 2017, 08:11 PM - Edit history (1)
The shrunken carcasses of cows lie in scorched fields outside the city of Campina Grande in northeast Brazil, and hungry goats search for food on the cracked-earth floor of the Boqueirao reservoir that serves the desperate town.
After five years of drought, farmer Edivaldo Brito says he cannot remember when the Boqueirão reservoir was last full. But he has never seen it this empty. "We've lost everything: bananas, beans, potatoes," Brito said. "We have to walk 3 kilometers just to wash clothes."
Brazil's arid northeast is weathering its worst drought on record and Campina Grande, which has 400,000 residents that depend on the reservoir, is running out of water. After two years of rationing, residents complain that water from the reservoir is dirty, smelly and undrinkable. Those who can afford to do so buy bottled water to cook, wash their teeth with, and even to give their pets.
The reservoir is down to 4 percent of capacity and rainfall is expected to be sparse this year. "If it does not fill up, the city's water system will collapse by mid-year," says Janiro Costa Rêgo, an expert on water resources and hydraulics professor at Campina Grande's federal university. "It would be a holocaust. You would have to evacuate the city."
EDIT
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-drought-idUSKBN15W1HP
tenorly
(2,037 posts)Please post a copy of this on the Latin America forum, hatrack. Thanks for finding it!
pscot
(21,024 posts)I got an odd result.
hatrack
(59,592 posts).
OnlinePoker
(5,725 posts)The main reservoir serving Sao Paulo was down to 9% full. Now it's over 91%. If you use Google Timelapse on the Campina Grande region and sit it about 20km for the distance marker, you can see how the brown everything has gotten in the last 4 years. It hasn't stopped people cutting down the forest further inland which is where much of the rain came from in the first place. They've destroyed the rain forest's natural system for spreading precipitation through the whole region.
https://earthengine.google.com/timelapse/