Brazil's largest city may face drastic water rationing

Sao Paulo, Brazil and South America's largest city, may have to introduce drastic water rationing five days a week unless it rains soon, local water supply company Sabesp said Tuesday.

Sabesp will implement water rationing that will affect some 20 million residents if the level of the Cantareira reservoir that supplies Sao Paulo and the metropolitan area doesn't rise in the next few weeks, said Paulo Massato, Sabesp's director, at a press conference.

"It would be necessary to have two days with water and five days without" each week, said Massato, saying the measure would only be implemented under "extreme" circumstances, and with the approval of a regulatory agency.

The southeast state of Sao Paulo, Brazil's richest and most populous, is experiencing its worst water shortage in some 75 years, as is most of the country's southeast.

The Cantareira, which supplies some 6.5 million people, or a third of the capital's residents, is filled only to 5.1 percent of its capacity.

In November, Sabesp resorted to pumping so-called "dead storage," defined as the volume below the lowest controllable level of water.

Brazil's rainy season usually runs from November to April, but the rainfall hasn't been enough to fill the reservoirs. Endi