Ecoboats Ramp up Work in Guanabara Bay

(ATR) Ten ecoboats continue to pick up floating debris in Guanabara Bay to clear out the Olympic sailing courses.

The ecoboats, run by Brazilian company ProOceano, serve as the final clean-up method to remove floating trash from the sailing courses in Guanabara Bay. Ecoboats are floating boats that operate from 8 am to 4 pm, taking an hour off for lunch. During the Games two more ecoboats will be called in to help clean up debris on the sailing courses.

Thiago Miranda, Manager of ProOceano operations, told Around the Rings that during the Games operations will begin at 6 am by looking at the Olympic courses for the current state of debris. The 12 ecoboats will then begin cleaning the area at 7 am, with a focus on the courses used that day. Operations will run until 6 pm or whenever competition has wrapped up.

"The operations for the ecoboats are going as planned, and we are already focusing on the contingency actions around the competition venues, which we expect will work for the Games," Miranda tells ATR. "I should say that we could not expect the ecoboats would clean up the bay and take all the garbage out, but we realize the ecoboats are effective on a contingency framework to avoid the garbage to get into the venues."

Guanabara Bay remains a challenge to clean for the Olympics, despite organizers insistence they would meet an 80 percent treatment of sewage flowing into the Bay during the bid process. Organizers have been working to keep necessary areas clean of both man-made trash and natural debris such as trees and other objects that would be found floating in a large natural bay.

City and state officials now estimate that over 50 percent of sewage will be treated, but that does not account for the floating debris that makes its way into the bay through rivers that flow in from the surrounding municipalities.

In addition to the ecoboats, all of the 17 ecobarriers needed ahead of the Games have been fully installed in tributaries that flow into Guanabara Bay according to a report from O Globo. The barriers serve as giant nets across rivers that carry floating garbage into the bay as the first line of defense to stop debris from impeding Olympic sailors.

"Previously, the fishermen cut the ecobarriers in order to enter into the river, now they are much more organized," Lawrence Ravazzano, director of EcoBoat operations told O Globo. "The ecobarriers minimize the volume of waste arriving at the bay. It's good for everyone."

Still, Miranda predicts the contingency plans will allow for quality sailing in the Bay, barring a spat of continuous rainy weather. According to the same O Globo report, 700 kilograms of trash were removed daily from the bay in June.

"If there is bad weather it will be more likely that there will be more garbage drifting from other parts of the bay," Miranda added. "The major thing we do here as managers are to predict the drift of the debris. Using that, we point out the area where we should focus our operation and that is what we will be doing if there is an expectation of bad weather, wind or tide favoring the drift of debris to sailing areas."

Written by Aaron Bauer in Rio de Janeiro.

20 Years at #1: Your best source of news about the Olympics is AroundTheRings.com, for subscribers only.