Rio has a sewage problem

[pieuponieu 70]

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/d92f6af5121f49d982601a657d745e95/ap-investigation-rios-olympic-water-rife-sewage-virus

This real-world story made me think of CSL.

[rakowozz 37]

Born and raised in Rio. Shame we have to see this happen out of pure lack of initiative...

[pieuponieu 70]

I heard a really interesting story on a Radio Lab podcast a while back about the sewage treatment from NY city.  All the sewage was going into this remarkable filtration building where the "water" was passed from one chamber to another, and in each chamber it was treated in a different way (in one chamber, a bunch of insects were used to clean certain types of impurities by eating them and breeding in the water).  By the end of the process, a thick sludge remained.  And they used to put it on a boat and dump it miles out into the ocean.

And then one day, this guy decided that they should do something else with it.  They started putting the sludge on trains and shipping it out to Colorado (I think, maybe Wyoming) where it was used to fertilize crops.  It was the absolute best fertilizer these farmers had ever used!  And somehow it simultaneously acted as a pest repellent, requiring fewer or no pesticides.

Unfortunately, that exchange didn't last, because the community that was taking the sludge collapsed in a recession, and the farmers all went out of business.  I have no idea what they're doing with the sludge now, but it makes you wonder why we can't sustain what sounds like a really great, efficient, and useful way to recycle our poop.

[JP Schriefer 5,590]

They found a sofa in Guanabara Bay today.

http://blogs.oglobo.globo.com/ancelmo/post/durante-evento-teste-na-baia-ecobarco-pesca-um-sofa.html

[matias93 7,535]

One of the many reasons I love to live in Santiago de Chile: here, 100% of the sewage water is treated (thanks to our ridicoulosly expensive water bills) and returned to its natural riverbeds. You can even see it in satellital photos, as an engrossing and greening of the Mapocho river next to La Farfana sewage treatment plant.

A completely opposite situation is lived in chilean coastal cities, where the montanious terrain impedes any possibilty of water treatment, so basically everything is thrown to the sea. Guess why we eat so few seafood...

Offtopic: that sofa looks very good, a more clever carioca could have recover some good reais from it...

  Edited August 20, 2015 by matias93  

[Johan_91 179]

"By adolescence, he said, people in Rio have been so exposed to the viruses in the water their bodies build up antibodies. But foreign athletes and tourists won’t have that protection."

That adaptability of the human race