Brazil slips and fails to reduce the number of polluted beaches

​When the red flag is stuck in the sand, Sandra Regis doesn’t even venture into the sea: “I’m Santos, I already know it,” says the 59-year-old administrator. The reason is the large letters indicating that José Menino’s beach is “unsuitable” for bathing.

It’s always like that there, says agronomist Alex Gerboni, 27, who doesn’t really know what the sign is for, but just puts his foot in the dirt as a precaution. “The canal is very dirty. It makes sense that all that garbage comes into the sea, as well as the oil from ships”, he palpitates.

With all its beaches polluted most of the time for years, Santos is a symbol of a country that is unable to advance in cleaning its coastline, as shown by a survey carried out annually by the leaf in the summer, which officially starts this Tuesday (21).

In 2021, the volume of monitored points considered good (37%), that is, suitable for bathing in all measurements, was the same as recorded in 2016, the first year of data collection. Places classified as regular (25%) and bad (9%) also parked.

The bad beaches, unsuitable for bathing in more than half of the measurements, had a slight drop from 16% to 12%. The share of points that were not monitored, however, grew from 14% to 17% in the same period.

The information comes from environmental agencies in 14 coastal states, with the exception of Pará, Piauí and Amapá, which do not measure or did not respond. The period considered is always from November to October, excluding Paraná and Rio Grande do Sul, which only measure during high season.

The survey does not include 2020, when the new coronavirus pandemic caused a data blackout. Even with the return of life to normal, some states continue with a good part of the collections paralyzed, like Rio de Janeiro and Pernambuco, which are unmeasured in half of the points.

The polluted ocean is a thermometer of the situation of basic sanitation in Brazil, as the parameter is the amount of fecal coliforms in the water. The country’s stagnation in beach quality, therefore, is a symptom of its slowness in expanding the sewage collection and treatment network.

The so-called new regulatory framework for the sector, which since July 2020 has stimulated the participation of private companies in services and defined 2033 as a goal for its universalization, seems to have not yet had an effect, according to specialists consulted by the article.

“We have to be a little patient because it’s only been a little over a year, but also stay alert and charge to work. If we continued at the pace we were at, it would take about 50 years”, says Édison Carlos, president of the Trata Brazil Institute.

According to him, the percentage of the population with sewage collection has advanced little. The index rose from 50% to 54% between 2014 and 2019, not counting the huge regional inequality that makes coverage vary from 80% in the Southeast to 12% in the North.

Furthermore, only half of the waste generated in the country is treated. “We launch 5,000 Olympic sewage pools in nature each day. They end up on the ground, in water courses, in streams and, unfortunately, on the beaches”, says Carlos.

Dirt gets into the ocean mostly when it rains. Clandestine connections cause sewage to overflow into storm sewers (where only rainwater should pass), and streets and ditches have their pollution “washed out” into sewers and streams, including animal faeces.

A system that can no longer keep up with demand in normal times becomes even more overwhelmed during the summer, when the population of many seaside towns soars. In inland cities, rivers do the work of carrying all this to the sea.

For David Zee, professor of oceanography at UERJ (University of the State of Rio de Janeiro) specializing in coastal management, another factor that contributed to the stagnation of beach quality was the increase in extreme poverty in the country.

“We see an impoverishment of the population, with no money to implement collection. The speed with which cities have been growing is much higher than the speed with which the public authorities have to offer sanitation and stop the pollutants that reach water resources”, he says.

The data collected by leaf show that 90% of bad or bad points (252) are concentrated in just 39 cities. These are the municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, which, according to Édison Carlos, receive most of the investments, but which have more complex problems.

This group had a more expressive improvement compared to the whole country in the last five years, expanding its good or regular beaches from 44% to 52% and reducing the bad or bad ones from 39% to 29%. “The side of the half-empty glass is that in small cities there has been very little investment”, he assesses.

This year, São Paulo was an example of recovery. After a significant deterioration for three consecutive years, the state had a jump from 24% to 33% in the volume of good points between 2019 and 2021. The north coast pulled the high with cities like Ilhabela and São Sebastião, contrasting with the pollution of the Baixada Santista.

“the improvement [no litoral norte] it has to do with more investment in sanitation. Where we did not see this improvement, we attribute it to the fact that it rained more than expected. Santos had a lot of rain, especially from September onwards”, evaluates Patrícia Iglecias, president of Cetesb (a São Paulo environmental company). The city, however, has a history of dirt in every year.

Considering the regions, the South has the cleanest sea, and the Southeast, the most polluted. The Northeast has advanced a little in the last year, but continues with the capitals Recife, Fortaleza and São Luís without any beach suitable for bathing, just like Vitória.

Among the consequences of the dirty sea are contamination by viruses and bacteria. The most common illness is gastroenteritis, which causes nausea, diarrhea, headache and fever, but there are also problems such as ringworm on the skin and infections in the eyes and ears.

“There are many more poor people than rich people near dirty waters, living on stilts, by lakes, rivers and canals that are completely polluted. It is a huge financial loss for Brazil, which prefers to pay five times more to treat the sick than prevent disease,” says oceanographer David Zee.

Experts, however, are optimistic about the fruits that the new legal framework for sanitation should bring in the long term. Rio de Janeiro, for example, has already concluded auctions to offer services in three of the four regions of the state and should start building 46 sewage treatment stations in the next two months.

“It’s not like before when the company started with 30 years to operate. Now it has to invest very heavily, with goals and objectives set out in the contract. The scenario is different”, hopes Édison Carlos, from Trata Brasil.