Drought in the Amazon causes river to disappear – 10/13/2023 – Environment

The smoke that enters through the windows of houses in Manaus, permeating everything with the smell of burning for weeks at a time, is one of the main symptoms of the severe drought that is hitting the Amazon. Just like a plane taking off blindly, without the pilots being able to distinguish what is a cloud and what is fire fog.

The aggressive shrinking of a lake — with the overheating of the waters, the formation of huge sandbanks, the limitation of navigation and the death of animals such as red dolphins and tucuxis — is another symbol of extreme drought in the region.

But nothing compares to the disappearance of a river in the municipality of Tefé (AM).

A Sheet This Thursday (12) he was in the Paranã de Tefé stream – a huge watercourse in normal times, a navigation route for boats full of passengers heading to the Solimões River and a habitat for dolphins – and found that he was dead.

At the mouth of the Tefé River (or Lake Tefé, as it is better known in the region), where it flows, the stream became a sandbank, superheated by extreme temperatures. The void runs its entire course, passing through communities dependent on an abundance of water.

For the luckiest houses, a trickle of water remained, used to quench the animals’ thirst.

Houseboats no longer float. Engines no longer pump water. Without the river, families in the communities that border it found themselves without drinking water. The most common way was to remove this water from the stream and subject it to treatment and filtering. There is no technique that can treat the sediment-laden stream of water.

An attempt by residents is to capture rainwater – the little rain that exists during the days of a drought that can already be considered historic in the region of the middle Solimões River, where cities like Tefé and Fonte Boa are located.

What is common to all residents of these communities, which no longer have a river, is their dependence on water that comes from public taps.

The city of Tefé is nearby; It’s less than 30 minutes along the river of the same name, between the mouth of the stream that no longer exists and the town’s little gate. But the difficulties are enormous, even in a short stretch.

Residents on the banks of Paranã de Tefé need to carry gallons and bottles full of water brought from the city on their shoulders. They stop the boats as far as possible, descend through still damp ground – a slippery mud – and enter the hot sand of what was once the bottom of a river. The route can extend for 1.5 km.

For the houses closest to the lake, the search for water in the city was already occurring in normal times.

There is no water tank in these houses, nor is the treatment and filtration process common. In more distant houses, the race for water in Tefé became more frequent, due to the disappearance of the stream, as well as in Solimões itself.

“It’s been 40 days like this. And it’s still drying out”, says fisherman and farmer Raimundo Bezerra de Amaral, 59. He remembers the drought of 2010, the worst in the region. “In 2010 it was worse in the sense that there was no water left, not even for bathing. Now we have a trickle, for bathing and for the animals. But, in 2010, there were 25 days like this. Now it’s 40.”

The Tefé River continues to fall. This Thursday, according to measurements by researchers working in the region, the height decreased by 6 cm. In the previous days, it had been dropping 10 to 15 cm per day.

The rebirth of Paranã de Tefé, therefore, may take time. Fishing doesn’t exist because there is no water. Families have become dependent on agriculture, but the heat and dryness prevent harvests.

“I plant watermelon, corn, passion fruit. Everything dies. Everything burns”, says Amaral. “We’re making more of a living from raising chickens.”

The farmer’s house is on one of the banks of the former river. A long wooden staircase leads to the house’s backyard, where water flows in times of flood. Below, a float is stuck on the sandbar. “My hope is that it will float again at the beginning of November”, says the farmer.

In the São Jorge community, a little further along, on the same bank, the difficulties in making the plantation thrive are the same. “We plant vegetables. With this drought, nothing was any good,” says farmer José Veloso Macedo, 59. “We throw water and it’s no use. The watermelons all died. What survived were gherkins, beans, bananas and a a little chives.”

Fishing became impossible, even in other waterways. “Everything is covered, we can’t travel,” says Macedo.

He was the one who transported students to a school in another community. This hasn’t happened for weeks, the boat hasn’t moved. Now, with classes suspended, the farmer searches for tasks and delivers them to children’s homes.

Drought is a cycle in the Amazon. It comes and goes every year. The riverside dwellers know that the Paranã de Tefé stream will be reborn, but they are surprised by the prolongation of the drought. The reality extends to several communities in the region.

Rivers approach points of historical lows, such as the upper and middle Solimões River, the lower Negro River (where Manaus is located) and the Madeira River. The drought is so severe that it should impact the next one, in 2024, according to researchers. Rain is scarcer than in other years, the day before, during and in the post-drought forecast.

In the memory of those who witness and experience the death of a river every day, memories of severe droughts grow. The intervals between one and the other shorten.

“The other day there was a big rain. We removed the rainwater. It got a little better”, says farmer Macedo.