7/12/2003: Bridge over foam

[Count Zero]

Originally posted by Undertoad
If Count Zero is still reading he surely knows more about this -- it's just south of where he lives. CZ, got some better facts?

Ok, here it goes. The Tietê river is the most polluted river in the world (I think the second one is -- or was -- the Thames river in London). It's absolutely disgusting. I've never seen foam like that, but, believe me, that makes it a bit <i>less</i> disgusting. You don't want to have a close look at it and you definitely don't want to smell it. They widened the river last year, but before that there were sometimes these floods... Well I don't want to describe it. :-]

The most bizarre thing is that by the time it reaches the ocean, it's absolutely clean! A friend of mine actually swam in the river and drank water from it several (and several) kilometers away from the city, and the fact that he is still alive and not horribly mutated proves it was quite clean. He said the water was transparent, but I wouldn't dare coming close anyway. This proves a very depressing (and a bit hopeful) point that the only measure necessary to unpollute the river is to stop polluting it, and nature will take care of the rest.

The government started a movement to unpollute it about 10 years ago (they even hired the same company that supposedly did a good job on the Thames), but it went stale, since the amount of work in the sewer system necessary to stop the pollution was absolutely huge.