Desafios para garantir o abastecimento de água na da bacia hidrográfica do Rio Itapicuru, Bahia

Abstract

In recent years coverage of sanitation services has been advancing in Brazil. However, in many localities, this is still incipient to meet the needs of communities due to the many years of service delays. This is a reality present in the municipalities covered by the Itapicuru river basin, one of the largest hydrographic basins in Bahia, with more than 80% of its area covered by the semi-arid climate. In this way, this work aims to identify the challenges to guarantee the supply of drinking water in the municipalities totally or partially covered by this river basin. For this, a bibliographic survey was necessary to characterize the study area. In addition, the Drought Monitor and Atlas Brazil databases administered by the National Water Agency (ANA) and the National Sanitation Information System (SNIS) administered by the Ministry of Cities were used to evaluate the progress of drought, supply and water services in that region, respectively. Through the study, it was noticed that, despite the negative balance, not water balance for most of the year, as surface water availabilities are much higher than the demands, which are low in this river basin. Despite the availability, on average 65.7% of the population of the municipalities were served by water supply and more than 500 thousand people in the rural area were at the margin of the supply systems in 2015. As an aggravating, most systems of supply required some type of attendance to meet the demands, for expansion of the units or even with the use of other sources. Despite the implementation of interventions in some of these, the losses in distribution remain high. As a challenge for the water supply planning in this basin, are stand out that the available data are not reliable, which are voluntarily attended by the service providers, besides some of this information were inconsistent, mainly in relation to intermittency and shutdowns in the supply systems, and rates of loss lower than those of developed countries, who serve the entire population. In this way a universal access to water supply is a distant reality and not consistent with the principles of law 11.445 of 2007 in the RPGA of the river Itapicuru.