Brasília, December 5, 2002 (Agência Brasil - ABr) - The director-president of the National Waters Agency (ANA), Jerson Kelman, and the president of the System for the Vigilance of the Amazon (Sivam), Air Force Brigadier General Teomar Fonseca Quirico, signed an agreement this morning, at ANA headquarters in Brasília, to grant the use of equipment to monitor rivers. By the agreement, Sivam will make available, to ANA, 200 Data Collection Platforms (PCD's) and four Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler System units (ADCP's). These state-of-the-art instruments are used to measure the volume of water in rivers, among other applications.

ANA will be responsible for the installation, maintenance, and operation of the equipment. Besides these 200 new platforms, which will be installed in the Brazilian Amazon, ANA already runs more than five thousand stations throughout the country to collect data on hydrological parameters, as part of the National Hydrometeorological Network. Every hour the network transmits data to its users, via internet, on flow, evaporation, water quality, and sediment levels, among other items, which will be used to development infrastructure projects, such as in navegation, energy generation, and agriculture.

During the ceremony, a technical-scientific cooperation agreement was also signed, for the purpose of allowing ANA to be integrated as a fellow agency in the System for the Protection of the Amazon (Sipam). This agreement will make it possible for ANA to expand its activities in the Amazon Basin Hydrology Project.

This information was provided by the Press Office of the National Waters Agency (ANA). (DAS)