Diagnóstico ambiental e ordenamento territorial – instrumentos para a gestão da bacia de contribuição da Represa de Chapéu D’Uvas/MG

Abstract

Juiz de Fora, the largest city in the Zona da Mata Mineira and one of the main cities in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, has experimented a significant process of urban expansion in the last decades. This process has demanded a number of services and infrastructural investments. The water supply service, especially, has been under great pressure due to the significant demographic growth and the increase of the per capita consumption. This situation has forced the Municipal Sanitation Company (CESAMA) to invest in the viabilization of another manantial for future public supply, with the use of the waters of the Paraibuna River, dammed at Chapéu D’Uvas. Nonetheless, due to the fact that the dam is located outside the municipal area, and because of its peculiar characteristics, the use of resources from that spring will demand an adequate management of all its hydrographic basin. For this reason, the research area of this dissertation, besides the Chapéu D’Uvas dam, comprehends the Chapéu D’Uvas impoundment and its respective hydrographic basin, which occupies part of the towns of Antônio Carlos, Ewbank da Câmara and Santos Dumont. In addition to recovering the history of the construction of the dam, the main purpose of this research is to present and discuss a set of ideas and propositions that will subsidize the management of the basin, in order to endow the processes related to the basin’s management, and to guarantee the best, more extensive and longest use of its resources. The methodology used is substantiated in the previous elaboration of physical-environmental, socioeconomic, and soil use diagnostic. These data allow us to elaborate a basin zoning according to its physical-environmental, socioeconomic, soil use indicators. This methodology permits the recognition of the basin units which were most vulnerable to erosion processes and water quality degradation. The main results achieved were a more detailed knowledge of the environmental and social characteristics of the basin, the recognition and mapping of its more vulnerable areas, and the proposition of a series of action plans in order to promote its future management and land planning.