The water defender of Brazil, a non-government related organism asked to the Latin-American Court of water to penalize 5 Brazilian institutes that have been polluting the Carapicuiba lake for many years, affecting 800 thousand inhabitants in the zone

This is the siventh case reviewed by the Latin-American Court of water at the fourth day of work, a written answer was sent by the accused and once again the original expositor, Rodrigo Ferreira, wasn´t present because the Mexican government denied him a visa to entry to the country.

The Lake placed at 30 km west of Sao Paulo is a natural formation since the 50´s when construction companies pulled out soil from the zone to build houses. This lake and the habitat of flora and fauna are at risk of being lost because of the project in which the Sao Paulo State Government pretends to build a park.

“For this project 33 per cent of the lake has been filled with 5 million tons of mud that contains toxic materials as iron, aluminum and manganese, this has caused a massive death of fishes” said Tarso M. Maraccini, who talked in representation of the claimant.

The lake holds one million 600 thousand cubic meters of water and it´s 40 meters deep. This lake never had any problem until the Brazilian government started the jobs to fill it.

“In 2003 thousands of death fishes appeared and the External Commission of the Carapicuiba Municipal Chamber determined that the lake had been polluted” said Marraccini.

That year, a judge gave an order to suspend the job as a precaution, but later he took back the decision.

The main preoccupation of the claimant is the real sanitary and environment risk, also that when the park inaugurates all the population will be exposed to the contamination, and the authorities have ignored many different complaint reports.

Becuse of this he asked for a penalization to the Supreme Federal Court, The State government of Sao Paulo, The Environment Department, the State Department of Water Energy and Electricity and to the State department of Sanity and Energy

The version of the accused, the Project’s management of Tiete, dependence of the federal government is that the accusations are exaggerated because there are not scientific proves to show that the lake is polluted.

In the letter the accused also says that the park construction brings more benefits because the change of course of the channel and the fill of the lake will avoid floods and will help for better hydraulic fluency and will generate 13 000 jobs divided in direct and indirect.

06/LG/GT