SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – The summer season has finally arrived and the coastal areas of the state of São Paulo is ready to welcome a record number of tourists.
To this end,both municipal and state government have introduced a number of improvements throughout the year in both the Baixada Santista (near the port of Santos) and the Northern Coast (near the state of Rio de Janeiro). There are sanitation and water supply works, as well as reinforcement in police and road infrastructure.
Investments by SABESP, the São Paulo sanitation company, total R$250 (US$63) million throughout the year in the region. In Baixada Santista, 51.9 km of new water and sewage pipelines were installed. In Guarujá and in the district of Vicente de Carvalho, water collection from the Jurubatuba River, an important source of supply, was cleaned.
In June, the Peruíbe Water Treatment Plant went into operation, with a flow rate of 270 liters per second and an investment of R$8.4 million. The Guaraú Water Treatment Plant, which provides greater safety to the water supply, started operating in September.
Concurrently, several water network interconnections at various points in São Vicente were carried out to improve water pressure and quality during the summer season.
In the North Coast, SABESP invested in improvements in the water supply systems in the municipalities of Ubatuba, Ilhabela, São Sebastião and Caraguatatuba.
The set of actions included the removal of sand from collected water, reservoir washing, improvements and installation of new water distribution networks, an extension of reservoirs and supply sectoring by neighborhoods of the region’s municipalities.
Security
The policing of the city of Praia Grande, an important tourist destination on the São Paulo coast, was increased in late December when the new headquarters of the 45th Military Police Battalion of the Interior was inaugurated.
For the construction of the new headquarters, R$5 million were invested in a partnership between the city and the private sector. The unit serves some 320,000 residents of the city of São Paulo’s Southern coastline.
Roads
Throughout the summer season, São Paulo’s highway concessionaires perform Operation Summer + Insurance. During the period, there is reinforcement in the medical and mechanical care teams, with an increase in the number of winches and ambulances to meet the increase in vehicle traffic.
On another front, the companies adopt the “Queue Cut Operation”, where the toll is collected by employees while cars are still waiting in the line for the toll booths, to ease the flow of traffic at the toll plazas.
Tourist Record
The expectation of receiving an unprecedented volume of tourists this summer was pointed out by the governor of São Paulo, João Doria. When he visited the municipality of Cubatão in December, he said São Paulo is expected to welcome over one million visitors during the period ranging from December 15th to February 29th.
According to him, this is “the largest volume of tourists to the region in the recent history of the state of São Paulo”. There are two reasons behind this: “first, because the economic conditions of the population have improved; and second, because the beaches of Brazil’s Northeast region of Brazil are still in poor conditions for tourism, which should contribute to more people opting for the São Paulo coast during the period”.