the Greek gift of transposition

Criticisms from readers of People’s Gazette to the article “Rivalry over the transposition of the São Francisco is a fight over the authorship of a historical error”, dated 6/11, reveal the need to deepen and better clarify important aspects of the project to transpose the São Francisco River. Among them, economic issues associated with the high operational cost of the country’s mega pumping system stand out, commonly ignored and relegated by many defenders of the project.

It is difficult to understand how a project like the transposition prospered unscathed in a time of political turmoil and questioning like that of recent years. The transposition of the São Francisco River, as the flagship of the Federal Government’s traditional hydraulic policy in the Brazilian semi-arid region, should be seen as one of the milestones of anti-liberalism in Brazilian politics. On the contrary, in the Bolsonaro government, identified with the liberal right, there was an uncompromising defense of the work.

The entire project is anti-liberal, with its historical reference dating back to the end of the empire, 150 years ago. It is a poorly explained project, where the political version disseminated by government propaganda prevails, as always without commitment to reality. It is claimed that transposition would be the most efficient way of tackling the secular and recurrent problem of drought in Brazil and would have a minimum environmental and opportunity cost, such that it would be cheaper to do the work than not to do it.

In contrast, critics associate the project with a kind of Greek gift that the federal government imposes on the people of the Northeast, given the restrictive nature of the real project, with a small area of ​​influence of just 5% of the semi-arid region. Its priority is questioned, given the high economic and environmental cost compared to the small effective social benefits. The project will transfer water from the São Francisco River to the largest reservoirs in the region, largely following the waters through unpopulated stretches, along the beds of the largest rivers, and directly benefiting a few cities.

In the second Lula government, the transposition of the São Francisco River was practically institutionalized through the Ministry of Regional Development, transforming into a broad hegemonic investment program by the federal government in water works in the semi-arid region – thus conditioning the main water projects of demands diffuse distribution of states in the project’s area of ​​influence.

It is a fact that there were strong reactions, with denunciations and challenges to the project from its inception during the FHC government, until the beginning of works during the second Lula government, when the fait accompli occurred that stifled the public debate, considered, at the time, as a stage passed. This was the political strategy that lasted from 2007 until 2022, and the completion of the costly tests of the pumping system was carried out by the Bolsonaro government. In the two years of testing, the federal government spent more than one billion reais, which represents a large part of the final costs of the project with pumping the water necessary to fill the intermediate reservoirs to ensure continuous flow in the North Axis of Rio. São Francisco to Rio Grande do Norte.

The transposition was symbolically inaugurated by Bolsonaro, in a large rally on the bank of the Piranhas-Açu River, in RN, at the beginning of 2022, so, due to a lack of specific budgetary resources, the water from the transposition stopped reaching RN. This is the current reality in which the project finds itself, awaiting the counterparts promised by the states, subsequently agreed with the federal government, including Bolsonaro’s.

So, after the long hooray phase of the construction of the mega-project supported by the billions of resources foreseen in the project budget, the time has come for the jaguar to drink the water of the transposition, as they say in the Northeast. As a real shock of reality, came the heavy bill of half a billion reais per year for maintaining the transposition, which is the direct responsibility of the states, which are already taking care of providing ways to collect resources from their populations.

It is worth highlighting the high annual cost of transposition when comparing them with investments in the area of ​​water resources by the Federal Government in the Brazilian semi-arid region. With the annual expenditure to cover the transposition, the federal government would be able to develop a broad permanent water distribution program throughout the region – with half a billion reais a pipeline system is built to serve 250,000 people. Therefore, the problem is essentially political, with the aggravating factor of consensus and lack of interest in tackling it. It remains to be seen: until when?

* João Abner Guimarães Jr. is a retired full professor at UFRN, with a PhD in Hydraulics and Sanitation from USP.