Brazil: Manaus water company to invest US$678 million to universalize basic sanitation

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Bathed by the largest hydrographic basin in the world, Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state, still suffers from a lack of basic sanitation. In the city of 2.2 million inhabitants, three out of four people (74% of the population) do not have access to treated sewage, a share that was even higher four years ago, at 84%. The progress in recent years, even though the service is far from reaching all families, is celebrated by the concessionaire Águas de Manaus, which took over the city’s basic sanitation in 2018 and has invested R$500 million (US$97 million) since then.

After having guaranteed the universalization of access to treated water in the capital of Amazonas, taking it even to poor communities in hard-to-reach places, the company says it is prepared to meet the goal of the Sanitation Legal Framework of universalizing both services by 2033 – that is, reaching at least 90% coverage of treated sewage in 11 years. With this goal and maintaining the current access levels to drinking water, the company plans an investment of R$3.5 billion in the period.

R$1 billion will be spent to ensure that 45% of the Manaus population has access to sewage treatment by 2025. The investments start in areas with higher demographic density and already have treatment plants. The forecast is that the capacity of part of the 80 stations currently in activity will be expanded. “We have many small stations that will be replaced by larger ones, to expand by up to four times the treatment capacity,” says Diego Dal Magro, executive director of Águas de Manaus.

To make the service universal, the concessionaire intends to install an average of 300 km of new sewage networks every year, equivalent to almost the distance from São Paulo to Ribeirão Preto. But besides guaranteeing the infrastructure to supply the city, the company needs to convince people who have never had access to water and sewage that basic sanitation, although a paid service, is essential for health and development. “The main challenge is awareness,” says Dal Magro.

During the engineering work, a social team from the company went to people’s homes to talk about the benefits of the arrival of water and collected and treated sewage. “It is almost a catechesis about sanitation,” says Renato Medicis, regional vice-president at Aegea, the controlling company of Águas de Manaus. He says that the work of approaching people is essential to adapt the service to the customer.

In these visits to the communities, the concessionaire closely observes that there are still relationship obstacles. “For people who have lived 70 years with sewage at their doorstep, it is a massive change. Many people still take time to understand the gain they’re going to have,” says the regional vice president at Aegea. “I wouldn’t say it’s an obstacle, but it’s a big challenge for the sanitation companies to understand that we’re not just talking about an engineering project, but about people.”

In some places, the resistance of part of the residents has been circumvented with the help of community leaders. In the Coliseu community, in the east zone of Manaus, where more than 10,000 families live, the work to bring treated water started in October last year. Carlos César da Costa Santos, president of the Association of Residents of the Coliseu Community, has lived in the region for more than 30 years and says that, before, the residents only had sporadic access to untreated water coming from wells made by the local inhabitants themselves.

In general, the price was even higher for those who wanted access to these wells: about R$70 per month. With the social tariff implemented in the region by Águas de Manaus, the monthly cost of treated water can be a little more than R$20 if consumption is low. In the Coliseu community, everyone was included in the social tariff, although, according to the program’s rules, the obligation is only for people who are in the federal government’s Unified Registry.

The benefit of the social tariff, today guaranteed to 85,000 families from Manaus, gives a 50% discount on their bills to families living in vulnerable situations. The goal of Manaus Water is to take the social tariff to at least 100,000 families by July. “It will be the largest amount in the country’s capitals,” says Thiago Terada, president director of the concessionaire.

Even with the social tariff, some people still resist paying, says Gisele Dantas de Oliveira, 42, a resident of the Cachoeirinha neighborhood in the south zone of Manaus, since she was two years old. She observes, however, that there is less and less opposition to the company’s entrance in the area, given the gains perceived in the last few years. “The children have improved a lot with the arrival of the water. They no longer have diarrhea or vomiting. Most don’t buy water anymore; they drink from the tap,” she says.

Gisele’s perception is confirmed in a study done by the Trata Brasil Institute last year about the change in the population’s lives with the arrival of drinking water. Residents of Cachoeirinha, where Gisele lives, and of two other neighborhoods, Compensa and Redenção, which also have areas on stilts, alleys, and rip raps, were heard. The study shows that clandestine connections, which posed health risks and were the main source of access to water, have been eliminated.

Eighty-one percent of the interviewees see improvements in health and quality of life. For Gisele, the benefits are also visible in the consolidation of the community. With the arrival of the utility, the 143 families living in the region also started to have a ZIP code. “We were not recognized. Now we can open credit at the store,” she celebrates. One of the benefits most often mentioned by the residents in the survey is the regularization of their homes. The population can now count, for the first time, on proof of residence.

In the João Paulo IV community, where almost 2,000 families live, the situation is similar to Cachoeirinha. Community leader Vilson Moraes de Souza says that the region’s children used to stay weeks without going to school because they had no water to take a bath or eat. “When it rained, everything burst, and mud got into the house,” he says. Now, the expectation is to collect and treat sewage, which still has not reached the community.

Today, there is almost 800 km of the sewage network in Manaus, a quantity still insufficient to supply the entire city. “We are in the process of expanding it. Meanwhile, we have already reached universality in water, and the challenge is to maintain it. The city is growing, there are irregular occupations, and we are following closely to bring the infrastructure and guarantee that universalization will be maintained,” says Dal Magro.

With information from Exame