Tunnel vision

Published February 10, 2014
A worker is seen inside the Cuncas II tunnel that will link the canals being built to divert water from the Sao Francisco river for use in four drought-plagued states.
A worker is seen inside the Cuncas II tunnel that will link the canals being built to divert water from the Sao Francisco river for use in four drought-plagued states.
Workers monitor the drilling of the Cuncas II tunnel that will link the canals being built to divert water from the Sao Francisco river for use in four drought-plagued states.
Workers monitor the drilling of the Cuncas II tunnel that will link the canals being built to divert water from the Sao Francisco river for use in four drought-plagued states.
A general view of workers inside the Cuncas I tunnel that will link the canals being built to divert water from the Sao Francisco river for use in four drought-plagued states.
A general view of workers inside the Cuncas I tunnel that will link the canals being built to divert water from the Sao Francisco river for use in four drought-plagued states.
A worker welds a pipe in a pumping station of one of the canals being built to divert water from the Sao Francisco river for use in four drought-plagued states.
A worker welds a pipe in a pumping station of one of the canals being built to divert water from the Sao Francisco river for use in four drought-plagued states.
A general view of the construction of a pumping station at the head of one of the canals being built to divert water from the Sao Francisco river for use in four drought-plagued states.
A general view of the construction of a pumping station at the head of one of the canals being built to divert water from the Sao Francisco river for use in four drought-plagued states.
A general view of the pumping station at the head of one of the canals being built to divert water from the Sao Francisco river for use in four drought-plagued states.
A general view of the pumping station at the head of one of the canals being built to divert water from the Sao Francisco river for use in four drought-plagued states.

In 2006, then Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva, pushed through an idea that long-suffering residents of four drought-plagued states. By 2010, Lula de Silva said, water would be divert water from the Sao Francisco river and pumped over hills and into a 477 kilometer-long network of canals, aqueducts and reservoirs to quench thirsty cities and farms in the four states. Eight years later, and near the end of a first term for Lula's hand-picked successor as president, Dilma Rousseff, the project is only half built.

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