The water crisis
Does Brazil even want me to come? It was a bit of a rocky start… Saturday morning before I left I was excited, anxious, happy, nervous and overall emotional. I waited until the last minute to pack and all I could think about was what I had probably forgotten. I only had one connection in Houston then a direct flight from Houston to Sao Paulo, our first destination. The weather was terrible in Houston so they delayed my flight, boarded everyone, deboarded everyone and then boarded everyone again. It was a mess! I met Victoria and Odessa, two other girls joining me on the trip that were on the same flight as me. When we landed in Houston it was pouring down rain and flashes of lighting at all corners of the sky. We circled the airport on the tarmac for an hour because none of the gates were available. The instant we got off the flight Victoria, Odessa and I ran like the wind to try and catch our connection to Sao Paulo. We ran to the gate and the staff yells, “Sao Paulo left! It is gone!”. Suddenly our faces dropped and we stood their speechless. We missed the only flight out to Sao Paulo that night.
We certainly we not the only ones who missed our flight because the customer service line to rebook was never ending. It took us about four hours to reach the front of the line. It was past midnight at this point and we were exhausted. United did not provide us with a complimentary hotel because we missed the flight due to weather conditions. We waited an additional hour to get pizza, the only food open in the airport. We called over 6 hotels until we finally found one with vacancy. We split a hotel between us and arrived after 2:30am to a hotel. The next flight out to Sao Paulo wasn’t until 9:15pm the next day so we had an entire day in Houston to kill. Pretty much the opposite of where I wanted to be.
We finally arrived in Sao Paulo on a foggy and rainy winter day. A man standing in the airport with a sign “Allie, Odessa and Victoria” greet us with a friendly smile and no English. It was an hour drive to the hotel and I practiced the embarrassing small amount of Portuguese I knew with our driver. He mostly laughed at me. Not exactly the encouragement I had hoped for. We arrived at the hotel and were thrown into group projects and lectures for the next 8 hours. No time for jet lag. Our project was on water rights and the advantages and disadvantages of small and large forms of governance. The research question sounded like something I could research for an entire semester, not one day! Our groups were mixed with Brazilian students and four ASU sustainability students. Getting to know the perspective of the Brazilian students was my favorite part. They provided personal insight on the water crisis in Sao Paulo and the politics behind it.
We had two site visits before our presentation on the current water crisis in Sao Paulo. The first visit was with the water company SABESP to understand the situation from the supply perspective. The man that worked for SABESP that was presenting appeared to be on the defense. The anger levels rose in the room and you could tell the Brazilian students disagreed with what he was saying and were getting frustrated. The man said it wasn’t SABESP’s fault that they cut peoples water off with no warning. Something sounded fishy about that statement.
The second visit was with the municipal court for justice. These were the lawyers that represented the population when environmental or injustices occurred in Sao Paulo. The municipal court had fought SABESP in a few cases and appeared to dislike the organization. What was going on? The problem is quite complex but it appeared that SABESP made some poor planning choices and SABESP was not prepared when a drought occurred. Instead of SABESP informing the public about their low supply of water they chose to hide it and continued to give large-user discounts. SABESP decided to handle the low supply of water by shutting off water to people (usually in poor areas) unannounced. The water supply is decreasing and SABESP has not created a plan to secure current water security or ensure any future security. We presented our ideas, opinions and insights of the situation to our professor and the Brazilian professor. I learned so much in two days about Sao Paulo. I don’t even know that much about Arizona!