Water safety plan integrated to the land use and occupation measures: Proposals for Caraguatatuba-SP, Brazil

Abstract

Water Safety Plan is an international tool developed by the World Health Organization to enable the implementation of better water quality guarantees regarding human health issues. This current tool´s template deals with water quantity suring the occurrence of floods and droughts only as emergency situations. The key issues of this paper are how we may integrate proactive drought and flood planning into the so-called Water Safety Plans. The city of Caraguatatuba, north coast of the State of São Paulo, Brazil, has a large tourist flow a high rate of population growth, and is currently drafting the Water Safety Plan. This article aims to analyze the Caraguatatuba Water Safety Plan and compare its elaboration steps and respective contents to the international practices related to the management of water conflicts with spatial guidelines in order to propose improvements. The methodology starts with an overall view of the Brazilian water system and steps and procedures of Caraguatatuba Water Safety Plan. The case of Caraguatatuba was compared with international practices, and more detailed comparison with a Spanish practice. The key findings were: the need of establishing a legal framework to ensure the plans’ successful implementation and accomplishment of recording the occurrence of extreme water events and its incorporation in the diagnostic step in the planning system, and the elaboration of multiple progressive scenarios establishing land use and occupation guidelines. The spatial guidelines improvements are: specific construction criteria for flood zones, targeting activities compatible with flood zones, patrimony insurance for flood management and creation of catchment points for temporary supply, limitation of non-essential uses as swimming pool and car washers, reduce irrigated land for agricultural crops, adoption an exchange bank for the granting of water resources, proportional fee by water quality and improve water use in industrial processes for drought management.