‘Puerto Madero’ in Pinheiros should only be completed in 2026 – 7/8/2023 – Cotidiano

Those accessing Bruno Covas Park via the old Traição Elevatory Plant need to go through a road full of red dirt to run along the banks of the Pinheiros River, in the west zone of São Paulo.

The site is in the process of being revitalized and should become a leisure center with restaurants, cafes and a lookout point, but that scenario is still a long way off.

Renamed Usina São Paulo, the space passed to the private sector in 2020, when a BRL 280 million concession contract was signed with a private consortium.

“The concession of Usina São Paulo is another step in the Pinheiros River depollution program”, said the then governor João Doria (without party), when he announced the signing of the contract. “I reaffirm here that the Pinheiros River will be delivered clean and unpolluted by December 2022. In this same period, we will already be inaugurating the São Paulo Power Plant.”

So far, however, the works are just beginning. The facade of the building, covered by a protective screen, remains apparently unchanged, while machines and workers circulate in the back. There, a stretch of the Marginal Pinheiros will be straightened to improve access and allow traffic flow.

This is the first stage of the renovation, which includes renovating the façade and roof (which should be transformed into a terrace with attractions for the public), changing the access road and building stairs and elevators to access the top.

In the second stage, footbridges must be made to connect both banks to the building and develop commercial projects on both sides of the river: an open-air mall and a corporate building.

The project was announced by Doria at the beginning of his term as governor, in 2019. The then toucan said at the time that the space would be the “Puerto Madero Paulistano”, in reference to the area of ​​the same name in Buenos Aires.

Despite promises that everything would be ready by the end of last year, the current expectation of those responsible for the operation is that the first phase will be completed by the end of 2024 and the second by the end of 2026.

President of Usina São Paulo, businessman Thiago Nagib says that the license for the renovation was only issued at the end of last year, which caused the delay. “This license was only published on December 22, 22 and that was when we had formal authorization to start”, he explains. As of this date, he says, the deadline is 48 months for completion.

When contacted, the former governor declined to comment on the matter.

The renovation should maintain the plant’s current function — to reverse the flow of the Pinheiros to relieve the Tietê River. To this will be added leisure services.

Usina São Paulo is a kind of continuation of the efforts of the most recent project to clean up the new Pinheiros river, completed at the end of last year. For Nagib, the enterprise can only exist because of depollution.

“The Pinheiros River was an open sewer, for lack of a better term. It is only after the Novo Rio Pinheiros project that, when it arrives in 2021, the river begins to have the appearance of a river again with the appearance of more water. fluid, more translucent and less smelly”, he says.

In the vicinity of the plant it is still possible to smell an odor coming from the river, even if much lighter than before. It is also possible to see birds, such as herons and caracaras.

There, some stream outlets have buoys that prevent recyclables from falling into Pinheiros.

The measure is part of the effort to maintain the cleanliness of the river, which includes, since 2019, the connection of more than 650,000 properties to the sewage network. As a result, estimates by Sabesp, responsible for the works, are that 2 million people now have access to sanitation and more than 3,000 liters of sewage per second are no longer dumped in Pinheiros. The project ended in December.

According to Marco Antonio Barros, engineering superintendent at Sabesp, this allowed the water to shelter fish. However, he says that the company does not know how much sewage still falls into the river due to irregular connections.

A survey by SOS Mata Atlântica released in March pointed out that the Pinheiros River is the most polluted among 120 bodies of water in the Atlantic Forest. Among 160 locations monitored by volunteers, water quality was considered fair in 75% of cases, poor in 16.2% and terrible in 1.9% points —the three locations that fit into the worst category are in Pinheiros.

Barros says that Sabesp does not recognize the results of the study carried out by the NGO and only considers monitoring by Cetesb (Environmental Company of the State of São Paulo). “These are samples collected in certified laboratories and demonstrate that the quality of the river is good.”

Gustavo Veronesi, coordinator of the Observing the Rivers program, from SOS Mata Atlântica, says that the depollution of a river cannot be seen as a project that has a beginning, middle and end, but rather as a continuous process.

“And Pinheiros is not unpolluted. The process takes much longer than four years — you cannot resolve 100 years of pollution in four,” he says.

A more effective cleaning of the Pinheiros is further hampered by the fact that the river is practically stopped. Without movement, the oxygen present in the water is not renewed, hindering the natural recovery of the river.

“One of the problems that led to the decrease in the natural flow of Pinheiros is how that area was occupied. There was a lot of soil sealing and it is the absorption of rainwater by the soil that makes the flow throughout the year more perennial”, explains José Carlos Mierzwa, a professor at the Polytechnic School of USP.

“It is still very far from the reality of people having closer contact with Pinheiros, but today it is much closer than it was ten years ago”, ponders Veronesi. According to official data, around 300,000 people use the bike path and the Bruno Covas park per month. “Now there’s a bike path and people get there. The linear park is essential for coexistence with the river”.