Catalão
8 Wastewater Treatment
A nature-based, low-tech wastewater treatment system designed for floating houses uses a simple, scalable pod placed beneath the toilet to capture and treat raw sewage (image 8). The system relies on microbial biofilm processes across three sequential treatment steps to remove pathogens, producing effluent with 28–300 CFU/100 mL—well below Brazil’s recreational water standards (1,000 CFU/100 mL) and aligning with WHO’s recommendation (200 CFU/100 mL). Inspired by precedents like the Handypod (WaterAid, Cambodia).
9 Rainwater Harvesting
A rainwater collection system designed using floating, modular storage tanks in place of conventional buried concrete cisterns, allowing it to adapt to seasonal water level fluctuations. Flexible piping accommodates these changes, ensuring consistent water flow throughout the year (see image 9). The treatment process includes UV or chlorine disinfection to address microbial and metal contamination, while the system is optimized for gravity-fed operation, with small solar pumps used only when necessary to maintain low energy consumption and ease of maintenance.
10 Floating Wetlands
Floating wetlands can serve multiple functions by both filtering water and improving habitat for marine life. Here we envision floating wetlands built on buoyant frames (see image 10) that are suspended in water but rise and fall with water levels, all the while tethered to floating homes.
11 Water Barriers and Multi-Use Catchment Platform
This strategy proposes a multi-use platform (image 11) with water barriers that use the river current to capture trash and direct it to a catchment basin. This catchment basin sits below the floating platform with a retractable roof. The platform itself becomes a public recreation space, facilitating the social and ecological health of the igarapé and its residents by providing open but covered space for communities to gather, for children to play, for market vendors to dock (see 12 Vendedores below), and for waste collection from the catchment.
12 Vendedores
If a lively street encourages the stewardship of dry urban space, does a lively igarapé encourage the stewardship of fluvial urban space? This strategy draws on archival images of vendedores in Manaus to advocate for a change in policy to encourage small-scale fluvial commerce (image 12) within Manaus’ igarapes.
* Catadores Fluvial
This strategy proposes that the Secretaria Municipal de Limpeza Urbana (a municipal agency managing waste collection) employs residents of flutuantes as Catadores Fluvial, or river-based waste pickers, a traditionally land-based labor group that is well organized and legally recognized in Brazil. Participants in the program could engage in a combination of maintenance labor on the other proposed sanitation strategies, trash collection, and citizen science efforts like water monitoring. This strategy could plug into existing labor organizing by Catadores in Manaus and the Amazon region to grow transnational solidarity between fluvial citizens.