Water demand for priority uses in brazilian semiarid: alto Paraíba Region and Taperoá sub-basin.

Abstract

The granting of water use rights is a control instrument of the Brazilian Water Resources Policy (Law Nº. 9,433/97). According to the Law Nº. 9,433/97,human supply and animal watering are priority uses. Information on water input and output in water system are fundamental for effective management control. This work aims to estimate the human and livestock use of water in the rural zone of Alto Paraíba Region and Taperoá River Sub-basin, both belonging to the Paraíba river Basin, Paraíba, Brazil. We compare the proportion of water consumption versus total demand in the sector. We used the database of the 2006 Agricultural Census and population data for 2007 and 2010, from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics – IBGE, and the information of availability water indexes by the2006 State Plan of Water Resources of Paraíba - PERH of 2006, which provides the demands of water in the studied hydrographic region.