Environmental Assessment of Public Water Supply Sources in Cianorte-PR, Brazil

Introduction: In this study, an environmental assessment of the surface water sources for public supply (Bolívar River and Ligeiro River) in the municipality of Cianorte, located in the state of Paraná, Brazil, was developed. The physiographic characterization of each water source was performed and a diagnostic protocol was applied. It was found that the points studied were altered in both water sources, due to problems such as disorderly urban expansion, lack of land use and conservation practices, absence of permanent preservation areas and the presence of an industrial zone near the water sources. Objective: The objective of this study was to carry out a diagnosis of the two water sources in the municipality of Cianorte, with the aim of indicating possibilities to prevent the new water source from also suffering from the already known problems and compromising the public supply in terms of water quantity and quality. Method: The assessment of water sources was developed through the application of the Protocol for Water Source Conservation – PCAM (Freitas et al., 2020). This protocol suggests that the assessment of a given water source be done by choosing representative points, transects or specific situations of the river basin. In this case, representative points were selected using satellite images from Google Earth®. Results and Discussion: No industries or other potentially polluting activities were found at the points observed. However, in the district of São Lourenço there are food industries, manufacturers of cassava flour and derivatives. These industries collect water from the Ligeiro River, but there are no records of release permits, that is, there is no discharge of effluent from these industries into the water source. Final Considerations: The environmental assessment conducted on the public water supply sources in the municipality of Cianorte revealed that all the analyzed points are in an altered state, indicating significant environmental compromises. Among the main problems observed are erosion processes, irregular occupations in Permanent Preservation Areas (PPAs), and land use conflicts, especially those related to disorderly urban expansion and agricultural activities.