Riverside communities live the drama of the drought with shortage of drinking water and food insecurity. The photograph above is of the family of Pastor Anestor Farias. (Photo: Alberto César Araújo/AmReal)
By Fábio Pontes, special for Amazônia Real
In the Rumo Certo Community, in the municipality of Presidente Figueiredo (107 kilometers away from Manaus), the population used voadeiras (motor boats) and canoes through the islands formed by the lake of the Balbina hydroelectric plant to have access to relatives’ houses and to the county seat. With the unusual drought that has affected the region for four months because of the El Niño “Godzilla”, the lake has dried up, the islands have disappeared.
Families like Pastor Anestor Farias need to walk more than four hours to get out of the isolation imposed by the lack of navigability of Lake Balbina, in Rumo Certo. They walk on a dirt floor that raises dust when they touch their feet.
The report of Real Amazon was in Rumo Certo on February 20th. The community is 55 kilometers away from the headquarters of Presidente Figueiredo, on a route taken by car. In the region, the ebb (descent of the waters) that should be at the end, proves to be firm. The community is not completely isolated because it is three kilometers away from the BR-174, the highway that connects the city to Manaus, capital of Amazonas.
It is towards the axis of the highway that the family of pastor Anestor Farias, 63, walks under a scorching sun. He said that in the 30 years he has lived in this region he has never seen “a drought like this”. “The only way is to put your knee on the ground and pray for God to send rain”, says Pastor Farias, evoking the faith to cross the “Amazon desert”.
The landscape becomes more desolate with the image of the dry lake of Balbina, a hydroelectric plant built in the 1980s and considered by scientists as a major environmental disaster, as the work flooded millions of hectares of tropical forest, including an indigenous land, that of the Waimiri. Atroari. The trunks of the trees, which were submerged, emerged in the drought in gray and brown stumps. In place of water, undergrowth appeared.
The drought in the lake of the Balbina hydroelectric plant. (Photo: Alberto César Araújo/AmReal)
The lack of navigability on Lake Balbina also makes it difficult for the family of farmer Douglas de Souza, 45, to travel. The report found him in Rumo Certo waiting for a ride to reach the lake shore and return home. He had returned from Presidente Figueiredo’s headquarters, where he went to the bank to receive benefits. “It used to take me 20 minutes by speedboat to get here [em Rumo Certo]. Now I have to leave my boat at a neighbor’s house, and then walk home. It takes two hours to walk”, explained Souza.
During these dry times in Balbina, Antônio Lima, 48, known as Sam, left his job as a butcher at the Presidente Figueiredo headquarters to earn money by transporting the riverside dwellers. He has a new truck. It charges from R$20 to R$30 for a route between the communities on the Balbina side. “I provide this service to the people in the communities, who face a lot of difficulties in the drought. I make 10 to 15 trips a day,” Sam said.
With no resources to take his truck, farmer Moacir Alves Lima, 40, said he wakes up early to face the long distances that separate the Catitu community, where he lives, from Rumo Certo, where he takes cassava to sell.
He says that when the Balbina side was full, he traveled between the communities by canoe. Now it does the same path in six hours of walking. “My canoe got stranded. I’ll need to tow it to the nearest point to the village. Now I have to go on foot”, said Moacir Lima.
The vessels were stranded
Lake of the Balbina hydroelectric plant. (Photo: Alberto César Araújo/AmReal)
In the Rumo Certo community, there is a shortage of drinking water and food insecurity, as agricultural production has stagnated due to the lack of rain. Just over 1,500 families live in Rumo Certo. Presidente Figueiredo’s city government says it supplies 5,000 people, including those who live in a nearby village, Novo Rumo, with water trucks.
In the small port of Rumo Certo, boats that transported crops and community residents before the drought are now stranded on the lake bed. To transport a small production of cassava, farmers travel up to five hours on foot with bags of food on their backs.
“Today, the riverside dweller who comes with two sacks of manioc leaves one to pay the freight. Our situation is very difficult,” said Joel Moraes da Silva, 46, president of the Boa União Community Association, which also represents Rumo Certo and Novo Rumo.
Another economic concern of Silva is with the indebtedness of rural producers who obtained financing from banks and who are now in losses due to production compromised by the drought. “Whoever took the money to increase production was at a loss, the debt is growing there [no banco]”, he said.
Silva stated that Rumo Certo is one of the main responsible for banana production for the Metropolitan Region of Manaus. “If before each producer filled up to four canoes with bananas, today they don’t reach one”, said the community leader.
Farmer Douglas de Souza said he bought land in the Lake Balbina region four years ago to plant cassava. According to him, production was going well until the drought worsened. The swidden is now causing damage, he said.
“Only a little of the plantation was left there, the rest I lost everything. We are even disheartened by such a situation. We spend the year working to harvest something and suddenly everything is destroyed”, said Souza.
Farmer Moarcir Alves Lima. (Photo: Alberto César Araújo/AmReal)
Farmer Jomara Santo, in the Boa Esperança Community. (Photo: Alberto César Araújo/AmReal)
THE Real Amazon also visited the Boa Esperança Community, located at kilometer 128 of the BR-174. There, farmer Jomara Campos, 27, said she lost all her production of pepper, lettuce, parsley and other vegetables. In the greenhouse that is in front of the house, the plants died with the lack of rain. “Everything we had is there, we lost everything without the rain. Without water there is not much to do, there is no way to treat the plantation,” she said.
Jomara Campos also reported the difficulty that the drought imposes on the supply of drinking water. “We had two empty water tanks for two weeks when the municipal water tanker filled them again. We only have water in the box when they [prefeitura] come leave. This is the third time they are here”, commented the farmer.
He explained how he does it when the boxes run out of liquid: “We’re getting water from my husband’s brother’s house nearby. To drink, we buy mineral water by the gallon, it’s the only way we don’t feel thirsty or hungry”, said Jomara Campos.
Drought forced displacement of families
Butcher Sam drives families between communities. (Photo: Alberto César Araújo/AmReal)
According to the Secretary of Agriculture of Presidente Figueiredo, with the prolonged drought, the production of vegetables in the municipality fell from 1,200 tons per month to around 300 tons.
According to the National Institute of Meteorology (Inmet) of Amazonas, the normal average rainfall in the month of February in the municipality of Presidente Figueiredo is 216 millimeters to 330 millimeters. In February 2016 it rained only 47.4mm. According to Inmet, there is no data on rainfall in the region this year due to the lack of a station in the locality.
As part of the humanitarian aid, the government of Amazonas sent resources of R$ 300,000 to the municipality of Presidente Figueiredo, in addition to food, hammocks, mattresses and mosquito nets, hygiene kits, medicines and pump motors with hoses to assist rural production. , said the State Civil Defense.
Afrânio Caldas, municipal coordinator for Civil Defense, told Real Amazon that 11,616 residents of Presidente Figueiredo were affected by the drought, which has a population of around 33,000 people (IBGE data). He said that many families could not bear the lack of potable water and the ebb of rivers. They were housed in the homes of relatives who live in other villages and even in the city’s headquarters.
“Families who traveled by river and spent an hour [para chegar às comunidades Novo Rumo e Rumo Certo]now spend five to six hours,” says Caldas.
With regard to the supply of drinking water to families in communities affected by the drought, coordinator Afrânio Caldas said that distribution has taken place since the month of October, when the drought was accentuated.
“We have already supplied 13 million cubic meters of water. Distribution takes place seven times a day and from Sunday to Sunday”, said the Civil Defense coordinator.
The Civil Defense coordinator, Afrânio Caldas in the distribution of drinking water, in Boa Esperança. (Photo: Alberto César Araújo/AmReal)
The drought in the Rumo Certo Community. (Photo: Alberto César Araújo/AmReal)
The water truck supplies the community of Boa Esperança. (Photo: Alberto César Araújo/Amreal)
Civil Defense man fills water tank in Boa Esperança. (Photo: Alberto César Araújo/AmReal)
Family of Pastor Anestor Farias, in the Rumo Certo Community. (Photo: Alberto César Araújo/AmReal)
Updated at 10pm.
Read the other articles in the series:
El Niño Godzilla: Fire invades indigenous lands in Roraima
El Niño Godzilla: Tuxaua blames logging company for water shortages in Anzol community (RR)
El Niño “Godzilla” affects northern Amazon with prolonged drought
This special report is part of the second phase of the project “Amazônia Real – promoting democratization and freedom of expression in the Amazon region” and receives funding from the Ford Foundation, through the program “Promoting Rights and Access to the Media”.
The texts and photos of the content of the Amazônia Real agency may be republished, giving due credit to the authors and the website link, according to the rules of the License Creative Commons – Attribution 4.0 International.
