BASES PARA UM PROGRAMA DE CONTRÔLE DA POLUIÇÃO DAS ÁGUAS NO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO

Abstract

In the State of São Paulo, the growth of the cities and the industrial expansion, has brought a progressive increase in the pollution of the natural waters. At the same time, the State population is using in a larger scale the same water it had used for years, for drinking purposes, industrial activities, agriculture, recreation and navigation. It is a legal right of the Federal Government to control water pollution in the country, having in mind the predominance of the sanitary aspect of the problem and what is correspondingly established by the Federal Constitution. The State, however, can legislate in ordcr to protect the natural waters, in the arcas under its jurisdiction. The legislation is named suppletive or complementary taking into account that it does not collide with the federal lcgislation on the subject. Several trials were made to control water pollution in the State of São Paulo. In this work, the author analyses the causes of failures of previous trials and, at the same time, proposes the basis for a rational solution. A new statal law worked out with government support and the collaboration of the Technical Division of Sanitary Engineering of the São Paulo Enginecring Institute is also presented. The Technical Division of Sanitary Engineering of the Engineering lnstitute believes that the new law offers the legal basis of a program for the protection of natural waters in the State, taking into account the actual organization of the State administration. The development of the control program will require experimental instalations and research; it will require, also, a staff trained in Public Health to perform office and field duties; the same staff shall study the treatment processes applied to the most diversified types of industrial wastes. The State has good possibilities, present and future, to apply the above program.