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.