Ceara cancels raw water tender, launches new one

Brazil's Ceara state water resources department (SRH) has cancelled a tender launched in March to design an operations and maintenance plan for a raw water system for the state, a SRH official told BNamericas. In its place, bidding rules for a more wide-ranging contract have been published, with company background documents due December 22, said the official, adding the contract will run for a year. The winning company will have to collect and survey bibliographic, technical, cadastral and land data; carry out on-site technical evaluations of 160 hydraulic projects including 131 variable-size dams; and develop a computerized data storage and management system, among other tasks. The contract falls under the state's US$247mn water resource management project PROGERIRH, financed by Brazil's national development bank BNDES and the World Bank. PROGERIRH aims to improve institutional, legal, and administrative frameworks emphasizing participatory management; increasing the network of strategic reservoirs, integrate river basins, rehabilitate existing hydraulic infrastructure, and increase the volume of water supplied by state water utility Cagece, among other areas. Water scarcity is a critical problem in northeast Brazil, particularly in Ceara, where 93% of the state is classified as semi-arid.