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  #1  
Old Posted Jun 23, 2022, 12:33 PM
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Depollution of Urban Rivers

Something that seemed impossible happened: the latest Pinheiros River depollution is working and aquatic life is once again seen in the river. Even turtles have been spotted.

It's a massive undertaking as 13 million people live in its basins, of which 1.6 million still have illegal sewer connections to its tributaries and the river itself. Over 400,000 housing units were already connected to the main system since the latest project started.

The river is 25 km long and ends up on Tietê River (that's big, 1,136 km long) and goes through several upmarket areas and the new financial district of São Paulo is on its banks. Today it's surrounded by massive freeways and one rail line, but it was very different in the past, a sinuous river, with clubs where people could swim on it:

Video Link


And here a couple of videos showing the depollution progress:

Video Link


Video Link


Video Link


And a couple of images all from the Instagram of @drone.leo and @serjosoza to give us a better context:







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  #2  
Old Posted Jun 23, 2022, 12:35 PM
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Anyway, I guess we can discuss plenty of other processes that's happening now, including the Pinheiros River itself as the its undergoing, but also other experiences in the past like the Thames, the Seine, etc.
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Old Posted Jun 23, 2022, 1:01 PM
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The Chicago river has been undergoing improvement and restoration programs over the past 50 years, the main one being the Tunnel and Reservoir Plan (TARP), commonly known as "deep tunnel" which has been multi-billion dollar, multi-decade long infrastructure project to build around 110 miles of giant tunnels deep underground to collect chicago's combined sewer overflow during large rain events and carry it to giant former-quarry reservoirs to store it for treatment instead of releasing the water into the river untreated. The project is due to be completed in 2029, but large segments of it are already operational.

In 1970, there were fewer than 10 species of fish living in the Chicago river and today there are more than 70, so the long, hard, expensive work to restore and improve the river is paying off.
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Old Posted Jun 23, 2022, 1:37 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Yuri View Post
Anyway, I guess we can discuss plenty of other processes that's happening now, including the Pinheiros River itself as the its undergoing, but also other experiences in the past like the Thames, the Seine, etc.
They need to do something about the Arrudas one in Belo Horizonte. That one was concreted and covered over with Avenues:
https://goo.gl/maps/bhWfbmBfZVcC6KRp8
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  #5  
Old Posted Jun 23, 2022, 1:47 PM
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Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
The Chicago river has been undergoing improvement and restoration programs over the past 50 years, the main one being the Tunnel and Reservoir Plan (TARP), commonly known as "deep tunnel" which has been multi-billion dollar, multi-decade long infrastructure project to build around 110 miles of giant tunnels deep underground to collect chicago's combined sewer overflow during large rain events and carry it to giant former-quarry reservoirs to store it for treatment instead of releasing the water into the river untreated. The project is due to be completed in 2029, but large segments of it are already operational.

In 1970, there were fewer than 10 species of fish living in the Chicago river and today there are more than 70, so the long, hard, expensive work to restore and improve the river is paying off.
On Pinheiros they did something similar. I don't know about Chicago region, but there are literally several dozens of creeks and small rivers flowing into Pinheiros. They built those tunnels as well along the river and along its tributaries to capture the clandestine sewer connections. It was a massive undertaking but it seems to be paying off.

We, urbanist enthusiasts, tend to have big dreams, but I've never imagined to see Pinheiros River this clean so quickly.
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Old Posted Jun 23, 2022, 1:51 PM
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Originally Posted by UrbanImpact View Post
They need to do something about the Arrudas one in Belo Horizonte. That one was concreted and covered over with Avenues:
https://goo.gl/maps/bhWfbmBfZVcC6KRp8
I've never been to Belo Horizonte, but it seems their case it's specially worse as they kept covering the river up to the 2000's when this kind of initiative was already widely discredited.

In any case, as it's a smaller river, it should be a much less complex task than São Paulo's Pinheiros. In fact, there are some cities in Brazil that managed to depollute their (smaller) rivers. Sorocaba and Uberlândia, for instance.
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Old Posted Jun 29, 2022, 6:01 PM
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London periodically goes through a drought every 10-15 years, thanks to a quirk of the Gulf Stream weather system. It brings warm air from the Caribbean to Western Europe all year, and why we don't get much snow in winter despite being the same latitude as northern Canada. The last dry spell was in the 00s, that lasted about 5 years. In that time the Thames was purported as the cleanest urban waterway in the world (it's still brown due to it being tidal/ estuarine), where it was said that if you dipped a cup, then let the silt sink to the bottom, it would have been safe enough to drink. Seals, salmon, even small whales started returning. The upper reaches one could swim in (though not advised, there are notorious undercurrents).


http://www.beforeiforget.co.uk/images/xanga/whale.jpg


Then the drought ended - and rowers started getting sick. In those 5 years over half a million extra people had moved in - the sewers, built in the 19th Century but future-proofed for the next century, had run out of its timeframe -they could no longer cope whenever a heavy rainfall happened and would discharge. And these rains are surprisingly rare in London, which is the driest part of the country and actually gets less annual precipitation than say places like Madrid, Melbourne, Tel Aviv (half the rainfall of NYC). It's overcast most of the time, hence the reputation but is not actually very wet, even outside drought years (where it technically falls into semi-arid territory).

Every summer the grass dies en masse, with or without drought -the city sits in a chalk valley and the parks become rather unpleasant dustbowls:








However whenever there is heavy rain the sewers now overflow -its estimated 20,000 tons of sewage goes into the water every year. Until the $5 billion Super Sewer gets completed in 2025 that's gonna remain the case. Wildlife has again abandoned the urban waterways.


In short the Thames used to be known as The Great Stink, an open sewer for centuries that in the summer months would force the monarchy and parliament to decamp as the smell was so overpowering. It then gradually got cleaned over a century. But now it's heading downhill again.


https://66.media.tumblr.com/cd3b8942...3l0o1_1280.png


the company Thames Water is periodically fined millions for discharging sewage, but they don't really give a shit


Last edited by muppet; Jul 2, 2022 at 5:53 AM.
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  #8  
Old Posted Jun 29, 2022, 11:40 PM
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The Buffalo River (Buffalo, New York), like the more famous Cuyahoga River, was so polluted it caught fire in 1968, severely damaging one of the lift bridges that crosses it. Besides the more well known grain elevators along the river's Elevator Alley, sections of the river included steel mills, dye manufacturers, oil and chemical refineries, hazardous waste storage, etc.

Republic Steel - Buffalo, NY
by David, on Flickr

As late as the 1980s, it was still a dead river, and identified as one of the most toxic sites on the Great Lakes. With the loss of most of the heavy manufacturing by the 1990s, and accelerated in the 2010s, the river has undergone an extensive cleanup and habitat recovery, and by the late 2010s it has become a hub of water based recreational activities, including fishing, as part of a "Blue Way," and growing residential areas, including ongoing conversions of former factories and grain elevators to new uses.


Buffalo River View 2022
by bpawlik, on Flickr


Buffalo River
by bpawlik, on Flickr


Riverworks 5 July
by bpawlik, on Flickr


Riverfront Residential Conversion
by bpawlik, on Flickr
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Old Posted Jun 30, 2022, 12:22 AM
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Originally Posted by Yuri View Post

This is a fantastic bridge.
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Old Posted Jun 30, 2022, 1:14 AM
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Jesus Christ muppet with his constant homerism and bombardment of pics. How’s this allowed when I’ve seen others banned or censured for much much less.

Yes London is the GOAT. Don’t need 599 pictures to prove your point in every. Single. Thread.
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  #11  
Old Posted Jun 30, 2022, 1:49 AM
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Jesus Christ muppet with his constant homerism and bombardment of pics. How’s this allowed when I’ve seen others banned or censured for much much less.

Yes London is the GOAT. Don’t need 599 pictures to prove your point in every. Single. Thread.
I like his posts. I always learn something new. At this point, SSP is almost like a zombie forum so I think it’s a bit counterproductive to be nasty with people who are bringing content.

About London, I absolute love the Thames! It’s wide, with all those small stone beaches appearing from nowhere and I cannot help to think on how it’s important to world’s history.

And Buffalo I didn’t realize it got fire as Cleveland. In fact, Cleveland is a very successful case. Their river seems to become very clean.
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Old Posted Jun 30, 2022, 1:54 AM
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This is a fantastic bridge.
Indeed. As São Paulo isn’t a city capital as other Latin America metropolises, it doesn’t have so many landmarks and this bridge became one.
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Old Posted Jun 30, 2022, 6:45 AM
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Thanks Yuri, sometimes think it's why the forum's become so deadening over the years. London is not the GOAT, which is why Im complaining about the 20,000 tons of sewage that ends up in the river each year. Izzit just because it's outside N America that's so offensive??

Adding content to this place I know and love is an uphill battle sometimes, but soz folks it's gonna be on the places I do actually know about -which looks pretty similar to the MO for everyone else. If anything this site over the years has opened my eyes to so many alternatives, for example I'm totally in love with the idea of going to Hamburg or Arkansas now (never on my list before), or getting away from the tourist glitz of NYC for a rather rose-tinted notion of hanging out in smalltown Main St -even suburban Wal-marts. Totes want to have a coffee refilled by a super friendly waitress with curly hair and a pen in it named Lou-Anne-Sue.

Likewise I'd never have discovered hidden gems such as Antananarivo, Ouro Preto, Lunenberg, Lamu

Last edited by muppet; Jun 30, 2022 at 10:11 PM.
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Old Posted Jun 30, 2022, 6:53 AM
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Was not always a fan of the aesthetic appeal of industrial makeovers, but last week visited a district in the Netherlands and was blown away. Eindhoven is a city that's bland, poor and boring AF - but then its industrial area is AMAZING. Block after block of giant factories larger and way more interesting than the city centre, converted into shops and businesses.



https://all.accor.com
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  #15  
Old Posted Jun 30, 2022, 6:58 AM
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Also aesthetically industrial can look amazeballs

Museum of Industry in Monterrey, Mexico - one of my all time fave structures




Beijing




Last edited by muppet; Jun 30, 2022 at 7:19 AM.
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Old Posted Jun 30, 2022, 11:32 PM
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Also aesthetically industrial can look amazeballs

Museum of Industry in Monterrey, Mexico - one of my all time fave structures




Beijing




Absolutely STUNNING!
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Old Posted Jul 1, 2022, 6:59 PM
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[post removed to keep it short]
I live in London, and I don't know anyone who would be willing to drink from or swim in the Thames, no matter how clean it is.
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Old Posted Jul 2, 2022, 6:03 AM
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Yep, they used to say that after years of drought and zero discharges by Thames Water when for a short time it was one of the cleanest rivers in the world, and the cleanest urban one:

https://www.mylondon.news/news/zone-...ivers-16568811

However it still looked murky AF (being tidal) once you hit central London onwards, and there's a ton of rubbish from shopping trolleys to crime scenes that end up in 'The Drink'. Nowadays of course, with Thames Water plc at the helm, I wouldn't go near it with a pipeline.

As for frolicking in it, a friend told me last year she went swimming with her mum at beauty-spot Twickenham, after a few rounds at the riverside pubs -something she said she did all the time since moving to London. My jaw dropped - even at Windsor, which is only a few dozen metres across people periodically drown after getting sucked under (kids like to jump off the bridge as a rite of passage) -as any Londoner knows the river has notorious undercurrents. About 1 person drowns every 10 days, usually on these placid looking spots for visitors. They do do swimming regattas and races in the safest stretches, but a bit of dodgy PR imo where everyone thinks it'll be fine for the whole river.

I remember a really heart wrenching case in my hometown, at the spot we used to play rounders. A family picnicking sees their teenage son go out to swim across, he does this a few times then suddenly disappears. His brother goes in to find him - he too disappears. The mum is literally left sitting there, her whole family gone in a minute.

Twickenham:


Last edited by muppet; Jul 2, 2022 at 6:28 AM.
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  #19  
Old Posted Jul 14, 2022, 11:23 PM
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Found on internet. Before and after of Pinheiros River:



Now:




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  #20  
Old Posted Jul 15, 2022, 2:24 PM
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Originally Posted by muppet View Post
Thanks Yuri, sometimes think it's why the forum's become so deadening over the years. London is not the GOAT, which is why Im complaining about the 20,000 tons of sewage that ends up in the river each year. Izzit just because it's outside N America that's so offensive??

Adding content to this place I know and love is an uphill battle sometimes, but soz folks it's gonna be on the places I do actually know about -which looks pretty similar to the MO for everyone else. If anything this site over the years has opened my eyes to so many alternatives, for example I'm totally in love with the idea of going to Hamburg or Arkansas now (never on my list before), or getting away from the tourist glitz of NYC for a rather rose-tinted notion of hanging out in smalltown Main St -even suburban Wal-marts. Totes want to have a coffee refilled by a super friendly waitress with curly hair and a pen in it named Lou-Anne-Sue.

Likewise I'd never have discovered hidden gems such as Antananarivo, Ouro Preto, Lunenberg, Lamu
FWIW, I really enjoy your posts, too. Very informative and always relevant to the topic at hand. As to the guy who complained, why would someone be so intentionally troll-ish? What's his contribution? I've never seen a post from that person before...like, ever.
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