Brazilian Oil
In Brazil, oil reserves off of the coast of Rio de Janeiro are being found and used to supply oil to the world and Brazilian people. This oil is being located underneath areas of coastal water in depths of 200 meters. This heavy oil in the Campos basin near Rio is where 80 percent of the oil in Brazil is being extracted. The well here, found by Petrobras, is said to contain 25 million gallons of heavy oil and is less than 4 miles from the extraction site in Pampo, which is already being developed. The site is so close that the new well could be operating in less than a year using rigs from the close Pampo site as well as a site in Bicudo. The flow of 3000 gallons a day is projected with this new site. Petrobras issued a statement saying that the new site was due to an effort to find new deposits of oil near existing extraction sites, reducing production costs and allowing extraction of oil at new volumes. Petrobras is one of the fastest growing oil companies in the world and is the largest in Brazil, producing 2.5 million barrels of oil and natural gas, equivalent in Brazil and abroad. Petrobras is a global leader in deepwater oil extraction, and operates in 27 countries in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe. The main problem they are having is that people are not investing because of debt that Petrobras has found itself in. Also the wells that they are claiming will have billions of gallons oil are coming up empty. This along with production costs is making the sale of this oil to investing countries very hard.
Favelas and Urban Planning
Brazil is home to millions of hardworking people. When farming became a great use of the land in the countryside, millions of people left the coast to find work. After a period of industry boom in Rio, many residents decided to move back to the coast to find work. Industry was a good way to make money so populations around Rio started to increase. Around the same time as the industrial revolution began in Brazil (around 1930 – 1950), Rio de Janeiro was the Capital. This led many to believe that job opportunity would be easy to find here. In 1960, the capital of Brazil was moved from Rio de Janeiro to Brasilia. When this change occurred, jobs became harder to find as their were less jobs to be had. When people were without jobs and unable to afford housing, they moved onto the hills and into the mountains. Creating closely packed shacks, the people of Brazil created what are now known as Favelas.
These shanty towns are home to close to 12 million Brazilians, 5% of which are illiterate, and around 60% are black. The favelas lack just about any sewage treatment and trash pickup. The divide between rich and poor people can be seen in even in the Favelas though. There is Rocinha, a favela with relatively better standards than others. Most homes are made from brick and cement here, and a good majority has running water and electricity. Sanitation is the biggest problem here, as sewage flows down a central channel in the middle of houses. A local barber, Wellington, says that it is embarrassing that in a country as rich as Brazil, that things are so badly managed. A tour guide named Carlos likes to take people deep into the Favelas to show people what they are really like, good and bad. He says the Favela is like a city within a city. A woman named Maria De Gracas, is a domestic made who has live in Rio since 1989. She never finished elementary school and now is going back. She has two daughters who are in University, and every day after work she goes to evening classes.
The Favela now holds 65% of Brazils new middle class according to recent reports. Despite the relatively low incomes, many communities are a long way from being slums as they are often portrayed. Wellington lives off of his job as a barber and an unofficial postman. He takes care of several mail boxes that reach people in Rocinha. Many of Rios regular mail services do not delve deep into the favelas alleyways. These jobs allow wellington to have a cosy house with all necessary utilities, including internet, cable TV, a bathroom, running water and electricity. The task now is to get approximately 7 million people running water and sanitation utilities like plumbing. Trash and sewage flow into the river and down into the bay. This has created multiple environmental hazards that effect the fish and other wildlife in the bay, as well as anyone who lives by or on a tributary leading into the bay, as well as the bay itself. Choliform A levels are very high in the innermost areas of the bay. This organic pollutant from feces has led to an overall depletion of oxygen in the bay, as these microalgaes release a lot of CO2. The death of thousands of fish, mainly a species that is said to prove the health of the waters, has alerted many to the contamination in the water.
These shanty towns are home to close to 12 million Brazilians, 5% of which are illiterate, and around 60% are black. The favelas lack just about any sewage treatment and trash pickup. The divide between rich and poor people can be seen in even in the Favelas though. There is Rocinha, a favela with relatively better standards than others. Most homes are made from brick and cement here, and a good majority has running water and electricity. Sanitation is the biggest problem here, as sewage flows down a central channel in the middle of houses. A local barber, Wellington, says that it is embarrassing that in a country as rich as Brazil, that things are so badly managed. A tour guide named Carlos likes to take people deep into the Favelas to show people what they are really like, good and bad. He says the Favela is like a city within a city. A woman named Maria De Gracas, is a domestic made who has live in Rio since 1989. She never finished elementary school and now is going back. She has two daughters who are in University, and every day after work she goes to evening classes.
The Favela now holds 65% of Brazils new middle class according to recent reports. Despite the relatively low incomes, many communities are a long way from being slums as they are often portrayed. Wellington lives off of his job as a barber and an unofficial postman. He takes care of several mail boxes that reach people in Rocinha. Many of Rios regular mail services do not delve deep into the favelas alleyways. These jobs allow wellington to have a cosy house with all necessary utilities, including internet, cable TV, a bathroom, running water and electricity. The task now is to get approximately 7 million people running water and sanitation utilities like plumbing. Trash and sewage flow into the river and down into the bay. This has created multiple environmental hazards that effect the fish and other wildlife in the bay, as well as anyone who lives by or on a tributary leading into the bay, as well as the bay itself. Choliform A levels are very high in the innermost areas of the bay. This organic pollutant from feces has led to an overall depletion of oxygen in the bay, as these microalgaes release a lot of CO2. The death of thousands of fish, mainly a species that is said to prove the health of the waters, has alerted many to the contamination in the water.
Water Quality
The water quality in and around Rio, including Guanabara Bay, is quite egregious. There are heavy concentrations of pollutants in the bay including raw sewage, industrial waste and hard metals, trash including plastic bottles and wrappers to household items like couches, as well as semi-frequent oil spills, sedimentation due to land overuse, and an oxygen depleting reaction to fertilizers and human poo which easily kills marine life, called eutrophication. The water quality is therefore very poor and causes irritation to skin, as well as thousands of cases of water-born pathogen diseases. About 65% of hospitalizations in Rio are due to pathogen diseases mainly deriving from the water. This quality of water is due to a lack of infrastructure in surrounding neighbors like the Favelas and other poorer parts of Rio and surrounding municipalities alike. There is raw sewage being put right into tributaries around the bay because a lot of poor homes have no sewage treatment or plumbing facilities like toilets or even running water. There is nowhere for them to excrete waste where it will not be sitting by there house for the next year, and so they go right into the river. This water eventually reaches the bay, relatively easily in the rainy season, and a toxic sludge of human feces results in the mouths of tributaries around the bay. Sediments from land use and reclamation have been washed into the bay as well. When vegetation in Brazil is taken away for land use, the underlying sand and dirt is left exposed since the top layer of soil is filled with all of the organic matter and roots that keep the ground in place. This exposed sand and dirt is easily washed away in the rainy season and the result is sedimentation in the bay. This effects the turbidity in the bay and only makes the water quality poorer, as sediments take up room for healthy water and eventually settle to make the bay smaller as well. The trash in the bay and in Rios tributaries is another result of lack of trash pickup and a waste management infrastructure. Bottles are cheap and Brazil has been using more plastic recently to make profits, so there has been a lot of trash being found in areas where the tributaries wash with floating trash. About half of the sewage in the municipality of Rio is treated. The lack of waste management, trash pickup, and waste regulations for corporations has caused poor water quality in Rio and Guanabara Bay.