It was always there, but it was not part of the landscape of those who approached the Jurumirim dam, on the Paranapanema river, in Avaré, in the interior of São Paulo.
The island of 38,880 square meters, equivalent to 5.4 football fields, resurfaced amid the water crisis that affects part of the country and which was also responsible for the reappearance of a ship wrecked more than 90 years ago and the construction of an old city in the interior of São Paulo.
The island’s resurgence motivated Rede Brasil of the Global Compact to launch a campaign to “sink” the area — in fact, against the destruction of the Amazon and global warming, among other points that contribute to the emergence of problems such as the water crisis experienced. in the country.
“When the dam is at a normal level, the island is completely submerged. Therefore, it is not possible to find it on any map. dimension already reaches around 270 mx 144 m, 38,880 square meters”, says an excerpt of the campaign launched by the chain.
The hydrographic basin covers an area of 17,800 square kilometers, around 100 kilometers long and up to 3 kilometers wide in some stretches. The volume of water is almost four times greater than that of Guanabara Bay, in Rio, according to the entity.
The useful volume of the reservoir, which bathes ten cities in São Paulo, reached 21.86% this Saturday (18), one of the worst of the month, according to data from ANA (National Water Agency).
The water crisis has revived in cities that divide São Paulo from Minas Gerais and Mato Grosso do Sul a past that was submerged due to the flooding of rivers for the construction of reservoirs to supply hydroelectric plants.
With the low water level due to the lack of rain for most of the year, in Guaraci, which is on the border with Frutal (MG), the retreat of the water from the Grande River, which in some points exceeded 200 meters — and remained more than 10 meters shallower— has caused an old bridge used by cattle ranchers to transport thousands of head of cattle to re-emerge.
In Colombia, an iron vessel 20 meters long and which supposedly sank 90 years ago, also on the Rio Grande, has resurfaced.
It was used for river transport of products such as coffee, flour and wood from the Rio Grande to sites along the Pardo river, and was supposedly overloaded when it sank.
As it was never removed from the site, it became visible again, as it had already happened at least twice in the last 20 years, between November and December of last year and in the 2001 water crisis.
This is also the case in Rubineia, a city that had around 10,000 residents in the 70s and was flooded in 1973 for the emergence of the Ilha Solteira hydroelectric plant, on the Paraná River. For the second time —the first was in 2014— old structures that were previously submerged are again visible.
The drought in the local section of the lake resurfaced pillars of the boarding platform at the old railway station, parts of an old sawmill, an old playground that existed in a square, a trough to treat animals and structures used to sanitize railway cars, like a water tank.
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