(4 Jun 2016) With only two months to go before the Olympic Games, surfers, sailors, rowers and other Rio de Janeiro residents protested the pollution of the beaches, rivers and lagoons in their city.
The protest was led by biologist Mario Moscatelli who's the most visible face of the fight to clean up the Olympic city's human sewage polluted waterways
Moscatelli has called for an audience with Brazil's interim President Michel Temer, whom he called the last hope for making good on long-postponed cleanup promises.
The biologist is asking for 10 minutes with Temer to request emergency funds for the dredging of the toxic lagoons that hug the Olympic Park, in Rio's fast-growing western Barra da Tijuca region.
Around 650 million Brazilian reais ($184 million) were earmarked for the project years ago but it was repeatedly held up and never started.
Rio is among the states hardest hit by the recession that is slamming Brazil and the funds for the project have dried up.
Water pollution has become the hot-button issue of Rio's Aug. 5-21 Olympics.
A massive cleanup was billed as one of the major legacy projects of the games, but an ongoing study commissioned by The Associated Press has shown the waterways where the Olympic rowers and sailors will compete remain full of illness-causing viruses and bacteria.
David Zee, a oceanography professor at Rio's state university who was among participants in Saturday's protest, said the failure to dredge the Jacarepagua and Barra lagoons around the Olympic Park could potentially prove catastrophic during the games.
Due to the high levels of sewage pollution, the lagoons are filled with sulphuric gas, which under windy conditions release toxins, enveloping the area in a foul and noxious smell that can have negative health effects.
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