Drought Sparks Water Rush As Residents Start To Drill

In the past, major windfalls have come when people strike oil or strike gold. But these days, prospectors are focusing on another coveted substance: water.

"In Brazil, prospectors are hoping to strike the mother load. And what they are drilling for isn't your usual scarce resource," NPR recently reported. "Here in Sao Paulo, there is a massive drought. And everyone's looking for one thing that used to be in abundance here - water."

Mauricio Alfonso dos Santos, a driller, says the practice requires precision. Drillers dig down as much as 1,200 feet to find potable water, he said. Many businesses are drilling for water to support their enterprises.

"Until the water crisis, most people wanted a well simply to reduce their water bill," dos Santos said, per the report. "But now it's because they're afraid they won't have any water at all. Many parts of Sao Paulo have seen their water cut off for days at a time," the report said.

It is not just the private sector taking drastic steps to find water.

"Sixty percent of new orders are by private condominiums, [dos Santos] says. He has an established track record and works within the law, but there have been many new wildcat operators that have sprung up during the water crisis who don't have the technical expertise to do the job right. Carlos Giampa is a geologist at the Brazilian Association of Subterranean Water. He says there's a clandestine drilling fever taking place across the city. He says only 20 percent of the wells being dug meet guidelines," he said, per the report.

The water pulled from these shoddily-made wells could be harmful.

"The well is not just a hole in the ground," dos Santos said, per the report. "It's a geological engineering work. Clandestine wells are a great potential spot of contamination for the groundwater."

Brazil residents showed signs of panic this winter when the government hatched plans to take aggressive steps to avert the water crisis—potentially instituting drastic water rations.

"Brazilians are hoarding water in their apartments, drilling homemade wells and taking other emergency measures to prepare for forced rationing that appears likely and could leave taps dry for up to five days a week because of a drought," Reuters reported.

Poor planning may be exacerbating the extent of the emergency.

"The situation is apparently worsened by interfering politics: if the state leaders would have done careful planning, rations and other measures should have already been implemented, but authorities reportedly didn’t want to alarm the population with elections taking place in late 2014," ZME Science reported.

For more on water scarcity, visit Water Online's Water Scarcity Solution Center.

http://www.wateronline.com/doc/drought-sparks-water-rush-as-residents-start-to-drill-0001