A once scenic coastal town has seen hundreds of homes consumed by the ocean. Climate experts say global warming is making the issue worse, but climate change is not the only factor causing this inexorable fate.
Published Feb. 17, 2022 12:29 PM EST | Updated Feb. 18, 2022 10:37 AM EST
Climate change and coastal erosion have been the culprits behind many damaged shoreline properties in recent years, but the situation unfolding in a town near Rio de Janeiro is an entirely different fright.
Atafona, Brazil, is home to more than 6,000 residents and sits about 200 miles north of Brazil's most famous beaches. Atafona was once a scenic coastal town but has become far more known for its destruction than its charm in recent decades.
Every year, the Atlantic Ocean swallows 6 more meters, or about 20 feet, of the town. Hundreds upon hundreds of houses have been devoured, transforming the picturesque coastline into "an underwater graveyard of wrecked structures," according to AFP.
Resident José “Nenéu” Rosa has lived in the town his entire life and told National Geographic that the erosion has claimed three of the houses he once called homes, including the residence where he and his seven brothers were born.
The remains of a house destroyed by the sea stand on the beach in Atafona, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021. As a result of human action, over the past half-century the Atlantic Ocean has been slowly and relentlessly consuming Atafona. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)
In recent years, he has spent thousands of dollars on rocks to build a barrier in hopes of saving his current home.
“The sea isn’t wrong; it wants what belongs to him back,” Nenéu said in 2021. “It will swallow everything, but I’ll resist.”
According to climate experts, the town's longtime suffering has been exacerbated by global warming. As sea surface temperatures rise throughout the world, heightened sea levels have sent more currents careening into the town's coast.
A man walks on the beach in Atafona, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021. As a result of human action, over the past half-century the Atlantic Ocean has been slowly and relentlessly consuming Atafona. Due to climate change, there is little hope for a solution. Instead, Atafona will slip into the sea. (AP Photo/Mario Lobao)
But uniquely for Atafona, one more ingredient has contributed to the town's worsening situation: water loss at a nearby river.
The Paraiba do Sul river, whose mouth sits in Atafona, is regarded as one of the most significant river basins in the country in terms of urban water supply. The 700-mile-long river provides water for more than 15 million people in 184 towns and cities.
However, due to consistent over-pumping, that water supply has shrunk in recent decades. The effects have been catastrophic.
João Siqueira, secretary-general of the Lower Paraíba do Sul Committee, told National Geographic that Rio de Janeiro consumes 44 cubic meters, upwards of 11,600 gallons, of water per second, but the river is pumped nearly four times more, at 160 cubic meters, over 42,000 gallons, per second, in order to meet all the other demands of the area, including diversion projects, mining and farming.
This Aug. 17, 2021 file photo shows a bird's eye view of Atafona, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil. According to Pedro de Araujo, materials technology professor at the Fluminense Federal Institute, deforestation of mangroves in recent decades have also left Atafona more vulnerable to the encroaching ocean, with the sea's average position moving about 20 feet inland every year. (AP Photo/Mario Lobao, File)
“This has been killing the river since the 1960s,” he said. “They guaranteed water to the residents of Copacabana and Ipanema, but evidently when one does this, from an environmental and ecological point of view, it is a disaster. What happens is what we see in Atafona.”
Eduardo Bulhoes, a geologist at Fluminense Federal University, told AFP that the reduced river volume has meant less sand has been transported to Atafona. Without the river sediment that previously washed sand ashore the delta and stabilized the coast, the community has been left defenseless against ocean currents, giving even more land for the Atlantic to gobble up.
Pedro de Araujo, a materials technology professor at Fluminense Federal University, told The Associated Press that he estimates the river has one-third its original flow.
Constructed houses on the beaches have also stripped away sand dunes and necessary vegetation, even further stripping the coast of its natural defenses.
Julia Maria de Assis, daughter of the owner of the Predio do Julinho hotel, that collapsed in 2008 due to encroachment by the Atlantic Ocean, poses in front of the hotel's ruins on the beachfront in Atafona, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021. Decades ago, de Assis thought someday she would take over the hotel her father had begun building and that was to be the largest in Atafona, but 10 years ago, the ocean's force finally tore down the building. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)
The rapid erosion is widespread throughout the Brazillian coast but has proven uniquely disastrous for Atafona. According to National Geographic, in one year, between 2008 and 2009, the sea advanced as far as 27 feet into the town.
There used to be a nearby island called the Ilha de Convivência, or the Island of Coexistence, that sat more than 600 feet from Atafona's coast. It was there that Nenéu was born in 1974. Fewer than 50 years later, all that remains of the island is a thin strip of land with the ruins of buildings.
For the thousands of residents that continue to live along the coast and pray for a change in the ocean's wrath, the memories of years past continue to sting.
Julia Maria de Assis told the AP that she used to dream of the hotel and the home she stood to inherit from her father. While she said she remains grateful to hail from Atafona, she expressed a desire for people to show more humility in the face of nature's power.
“I feel nostalgic for the house where I spent summers,” she said. “It’s at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.”
And she's not the only one who has had a visceral reaction to Antafona's seemingly inexorable fate.
"It cannot stay the way it is," Verónica Vieira, 47, told AFP. Vieira is the president of the SOS Atafona association, a community group that works to raise awareness about the town's plight. "It is an abandoned city, an apocalypse," she said. "It just makes me cry."
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