Rio Olympics: Water pollution a concern for sports groups
Sports federations will be monitoring efforts to clean up the polluted waters around Rio de Janeiro to prevent health risks to Olympic athletes.
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RIO DE JANEIRO—Olympic sports federations will be monitoring efforts to clean up the polluted waters around Rio de Janeiro to prevent health risks to athletes at the 2016 Games.
Just 2 ½ years before the Olympics, an extensive Associated Press report — published earlier this week — showed nearly 70 per cent of Rio’s sewage is untreated and dumped into iconic beach areas like Copacabana and Ipanema and into picturesque Guanabara Bay.
Those waters will host several of Rio’s events at the Olympics and Paralympics.
FINA, the world governing body of swimming, said Friday that its sports medicine committee would check water conditions just before the games.
“A test event will be conducted some months in advance, in the same waters and under the same conditions,” FINA said in a statement to the AP.
“On this occasion, the Rio 2016 organizing committee must present a certificate of water quality in accordance to Brazilian Law.”
FINA’s marathon swimming event will be held off Copacabana. Those waters are also the venue for the swimming portion of the triathlon.
In bid documents, Rio organizers pledged to Olympic officials that the pollution would be cleaned up after decades of neglect and poor planning.
In data obtained by AP, the measurement of fecal coliform bacteria in Copacabana went up 16 times above the Brazilian government’s satisfactory level as recently as three weeks ago.
The most deeply rooted problem is Guanabara Bay, which will hold sailing events. The bay has become a polluted dump where few locals — expect the poor from Rio’s neighbouring slums — dare to swim.
“We’re for sure concerned about it, and we’re in discussion with the organizing committee about it,” said Jerome Pels, chief executive officer of sailing’s world governing body, the ISAF. “We know with reports we are getting from sailors who are training there — just from the visual view of the water — that already there are some concerns. ... It’s on our radar.”
Rio organizers have been pressed by the International Olympic Committee to speed up building venues. Cleaning the water could add to delays in preparing for the games, which will cost about $15 billion in public and private money.
“Rio 2016 can guarantee beyond any doubt that no athlete, official or member of the Olympic family will be put at risk,” Rio organizers said in a statement to AP. “The health and welfare of the athletes is always our top priority.”
Rio organizers added that water quality was the responsibility of the state government.
“We trust that the authorities will deliver the conditions to enable the athletes to compete to the very best of their ability in 2016,” organizers added.
The 2008 Beijing Olympics were impacted by the city’s choking air pollution, which gave the city a black eye as the government tried to use the games to portray China as a rising, prosperous world power.
Carlos Minc, secretary for the environment for the state of Rio de Janeiro, acknowledged the bay’s contamination has been festering for years.
The Rio state’s INEA environmental agency has classified nearly all the 13 bayside beaches it monitors as “terrible” for 12 years running due to high levels of fecal bacteria. Exposure to such bacteria can cause gastro-intestinal illnesses like cramps, diarrhea, dysentery and cholera.
“That the bay is rotten and the beaches are polluted, everyone has known this for 20 years,” Minc said Thursday in an interview in O Globo newspaper. “This is nothing new. ... What is new is that now we have a different response than before.”
Minc said the state government had closed 10 landfills around the bay, though illegal ones were still operating. He said some industrial pollution had been curbed , and programs were in the works to retrieve floating garbage and install river treatment units — so-called RTU’s built over rivers that filter most of the 