The company that supplies water to Sao Paulo, the richest, most heavily populated state in Brazil, warned Tuesday that "drastic" rationing is a distinct possibility, with water available just two days a week if the level of the reservoirs continues to drop.

"To gain back more than what we're using, we'd have to have two days with water and five days without water," the director of the Sabesp firm, Paulo Massato, said at a public event.

Rationing would affect the entire Sao Paulo metropolitan region, Brazil's biggest city and one that is most affected by the relentless drought that has continued in the southeastern part of the country since last year.

Massato said the measure will be taken only in an "extreme" situation and with the approval of regulatory agencies.

"If the rains insist on not falling, we'll have to start rationing in a very burdensome way to save the water we need to keep the dam levels from continuing to drop the way they are," he said.

The water level in the Cantareiro System, which supplies 6.5 million people - a third of the population of the metropolitan region of the regional capital - stands at a mere 5.1 percent of capacity.

The discount for using less water and the fines for wasting it were some of the measures adopted by the regional government.

"Our engineering is running against the clock. We're setting new records for lack of rainfall," Massato said.

Even the heavy rains of summer in Sao Paulo, often with hail and lightning and which so far this year have knocked down almost 1,000 trees and flooded several parts of the city, have not been sufficient to raise the level of the dams. EFE

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/new...tic-rationing/


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