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ByJennyBarchfield TheAssociatedPress NITEROI, BRAZIL With thousands of liters of raw human sewage pouring into the ocean every second from Rio de Janeiro, Au- gust's Olympic Games have thrust into the global spot- light the city's spectacular failure to clean up its wa- terways and world famous beaches. But just across the Guanabara Bay from Rio, the sister city of Niteroi is showing that a real cleanup is possible. In Niteroi, 95 percent of sewage is treated and authorities say they are on track for 100 percent within a year, even though Rio's failure to do its part means that sludge still flows in from across the bay. Rio has not only bro- ken promises made to fix its sewage problem in time for the upcoming Summer Games, but the state has been downplaying expec- tations, even suggesting it might be 2035 before a full cleanup happens. Niteroi's success un- derscores key factors that stand in stark contrast to Rio: privatization of sew- age management, major in- vestment in infrastructure and a high level of account- ability and collaboration be- tween the city government and the utility to define tar- gets and meet them. In Rio's Olympic bid doc- ument seven years ago, au- thorities pledged that an extensive cleanup — which included collecting and treating 80 percent of the city's sewage — would be one of the games' endur- ing legacies, but it simply never happened: An ongo- ing study commissioned by The Associated Press has shown that rowers, sailors and marathon swimmers will be exposed to waters so filthy they're roughly equiv- alent to raw sewage. Why did Niteroi suc- ceed while Rio failed? For starters, it doesn't help that Jorge Briard, president of the Rio state-owned utility known by its Portuguese acronym as CEDAE, says he isn't sure where those Olympic bid targets came from. "'Why didn't you achieve the 80 percent that was stated?' That's the recurring question," Briard said in an interview with The Asso- ciated Press. "I always say, 'I don't know where the 80 percentcamefrom.Certainly not from CEDAE. Here, no one mentioned 80 percent.' Mentioning percentages is something very dangerous." The situation in Niteroi in 1997, when a private san- itation company won a ten- der to manage the city's sewage system, was even worse than Rio's is now. About a third of the popu- lation didn't have running water and more than two- thirds of sewage went un- treated. Over the past 15 years, the city has rolled out new treat- ment plants and hooked up hundreds of thousands of residents, whose waste flowed untreated into the area streams and rivers that run into the bay. "City Hall got to the point where it had no other alter- native but to look to the pri- vate sector for someone who could solve the big prob- lems," said Carlos Henrique da Cruz Lima, planning di- rector at Aguas do Brasil, the sanitation company. It was a bold move. Sim- ilar situations existed — and continue to exist — throughout Brazil, and pub- lic utilities still outnumber private ones here by around nine to one. Until a decade ago, the legislative frame- work for private utilities was murky, leading to a legal battle over whether Aguas do Brasil had the right to operate in Niteroi. The case dragged on for two years before Brazil's highest court ruled in the compa- ny's favor. The company has in- vested 500 million Brazil- ian reais (US$ 141 million) to expand the city's then- sole sewage treatment plant and build another eight units — as well as, crucially, to lay the pipes to transport the sewage. With an estimated 95 percent of residents now on the sewerage grid, Ni- teroi ranks No. 5 nationally in terms of sewage treat- ment, according to basic sanitation watchdog Trata Brasil. The plan is to reach universal coverage, bring- ing the remaining 30,000 to 35,000 residents onto the grid within the coming year, Lima said. By comparison, Rio treats about half its sewage — de- spite multibillion dollar cleanup efforts and broken promises stretching back more than two decades. Sanitation experts say Niteroi has the advantage of being relatively small. The population is around 500,000 people, compared with Rio's 6 million. Thatdynamicmakesover- sightandenforcementeaser, cutting down on corruption in building contracts and management,longascourge inLatinAmerica'smostpop- ulous nation. Amid sharp criticism of the failed cleanup efforts in Rio and the ongoing AP investigation, local officials have been dialing down ex- pectations. Last year, Rio Gover- nor Luiz Fernando Pezao acknowledged "errors" had been made in the bay cleanup. At an event at the governor's palace days after the July 30 publication of the AP investigation, an of- ficial with the latest cleanup task force pushed the target date back to 2035. Pezao is currently on medical leave and the governor's office didn't respond to requests for comment. An independent study commissioned by The As- sociated Press over the last year has revealed alarm- ingly high levels of viruses and sometimes bacteria from human sewage in the bay as well as the city's other Olympic waterways. A risk assessment based on the AP data found those who ingest three teaspoons of water have a 99 percent chance of being infected by a virus, raising alarm among some elite athletes, although whether they ac- tually fall sick depends on many factors. Several ath- letes fell ill while training last year. The consequences of sew- age exposure are more se- rious for the broad swath of Brazil's population for which regular exposure to untreated waste is an in- evitable fact of life. Public health experts say children exposed to sewage fall ill more often, are less likely to attend school regularly and fully develop intellectu- ally, and ultimately end up getting significantly lower- paying jobs than those from similar socio-economic backgrounds who grow up with basic sanitation. Niteroi's vice-mayor, Axel Grael, said the private com- pany's accountability has been a key factor in the sew- age treatment, with specific quality control standards spelled out in the contract. "Public utilities here have shown themselves to be in- efficient, unable to make the needed investments at the speed the population demands," said Grael, an accomplished sailor whose two brothers are both Olym- pic medalists in the sport. Briard, Rio's utility president, rejected argu- ments that his company had failed. He said ongo- ing infrastructure invest- ment had boosted treat- ment of the city's sewage from a lackluster 11 per- cent in 2007 to 51 percent currently. "It's a big advance," he said. Briard said CEDAE's goal was to get to 90 percent treatment, but declined to provide a timeline. "Water, I sometimes joke, we could even put on the moon," he said. "But sewage is complex engineering." Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes has been less forgiv- ing. While he points to ongoing improvements — last week he inaugurated a new sewage treatment plant — he says the city missed a great opportu- nity to modernize. "It is a shame. And not just for the city of Rio de Ja- neiro," Paes said last week. "It's a national shame." Briard downplayed the accomplishments in Ni- teroi, saying Aguas do Bra- zil piggybacked on work already down by CEDAE, such as development of a subterranean network of pipes. He also said that for nearly a decade the com- pany didn't pay CEDAE for the water it provided, allow- ing it to make investments that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. "If you don't pay for your raw material, or if you pay very little for it, it's clear your chance of being a suc- cess is very high," Briard said. Global experts say that privatization is not always a solution. While historically public water utilities have tended to be hampered by inertia and slow to adopt new technologies, today some of the best sewage fa- cilities in the world are pub- lic, said Kartik Chandran, a professor of engineering at Columbia University. He pointed to those serv- ing New York City, Wash- ington D.C., Los Angeles and Seattle as leaders in the U.S., adding that strin- gent regulations and strict enforcement are the basis of success. "If you look at regula- tions in developing coun- tries, they are mostly the same as in the U.S. and Eu- rope — and perhaps even adapted from that legisla- tion — but there's hardly any enforcement," Chan- dran said. In April, police investi- gators conducted a sting at several CEDAE waste treatment plants, collect- ing samples aimed at de- termining whether the facilities are just pump- ing raw sewage through and dumping it. Depend- ing on the results, both CEDAE and its top execu- tives could be handed pol- lution and larceny charges, the lead investigator said at the time. Mario Moscatelli, a biol- ogist who for decades has been the most visible face of the fight to clean up Rio's waterways, doesn't believe the authorities ever intended to make good on their Olympic promises. Not providing basic san- itation has become big business, he said, referring to the allegation the com- pany charges for services it doesn't perform. "It's a big official scam." SEWAGE When Rio fails, sister city shows cleanup possible ASSOCIATEDPRESSPHOTOS Rodrigo Staggemeier collects a water sample from Guanabara Bay for a water quality study commissioned by The Associated Press, off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. An independent study commissioned by the AP has revealed alarmingly high levels of viruses and sometimes bacteria from human sewage in the bay as well as the city's other Olympic waterways. Water plant workers hold up water samples, before and a er treatment, at the newest sewage treatment plant in Niteroi, Brazil. Toxic foam forms as trash accumulates against a floodgate along the Sarapui River in Nilopolis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, one of the main rivers that flows into Rio de Janeiro's Guanabara Bay, on Sept. 11, 2012. Biologist Mario Moscatelli leads a protest against the pollution of Marapendi lagoon, along Barra da Tijuca beach where the lagoon's brown waters empty into the Atlantic, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 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