With only 500 days to go before the start of the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, work is continuing on the sports venues, but the BBC has seen some unbelievable scientific evidence that shows there is no way the requirement to clean up the city’s polluted waterways will be accomplished in time for the games.
This will mean that athletes participating in Olympic distance swimming, sailing, and rowing events will be doing so in filthy, polluted waters. Guanabuara Bay, where the sailing events will take place, has been described by some Olympic competitors as a sewer, and the dirtiest place they have ever trained or competed in.
Nick Thompson, one of Britain’s top sailors, said recently: “Water quality is my biggest personal concern. If you are sick during the Games, it’s game over.” The Olympic Park in the Barra zone, from on high, looks pristine, just like a picture on a postcard, but close up, the stench is almost over-powering. It seems that with the rush to complete the different venues for the games, the waters around the park have been relegated to the end of the list.
A chemically treated “lime-green” lagoon surrounds the park on three sides, and is fed by several rivers, running a muddy black and dirty, full of untreated sewage. The BBC quotes biologist Mario Moscatelli: “Every river around here is practically dead because they are full of sewage.” Moscatelli has campaigned for many years against the way the lagoon has been allowed to deteriorate.
Super-bugs and fecal waste in Rio de Janeiro’s Olympic waters
In December, 2014, Digital Journal reported a “super-bug,” a drug-resistant bacteria, had been found in the waters where Olympic sailing events will take place in 2016. Then in February of this year, tens of thousands of dead fish were found floating in the bay.
Fifteen cities share the shoreline around the bay, and the untreated waste of over eight million people flows into the bay every day, producing 18,000 liters of sewage every second. The amount of fecal matter in the city’s water system is estimated to be more than 200 times the legal limit of fecal particulates allowed in the United States.
Olympic Organizers are saying there is a concern over the water quality being acceptable by the time the Summer Games rolls around in August, 2016, but they still insist they will be ready. Mario Andrada, Rio 2016 director of communications, said recently: “There is a huge problem with garbage.” This is actually an understatement. Between 80 to 100 tons of garbage are washed into Guarabaura Bay every single day. The government manages to remove about 400 tons a month.
Business Insider says last year, the Associated press obtained a letter to then-Sports Minister Aldo Rebelo, where Rio’s state’s former environmental secretary admitted that even the best attempts at reducing pollution in the bay wouldn’t come close to “over 50 percent” — not even close to the promised reduction of 80 percent. Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes later said he was “sorry that we did not use the games to get Guanabara Bay completely clean.”
The Olympic Games will begin on August 5, 2016, with the Paralympic Games starting on September 7. Last week, the head of the International Olympics Inspection team, Nawal El Moutawakel said she was “confident the problems would be resolved before the Opening Ceremony.” Many people are wondering, though.