The Cantareira System, the Largest South American Water Supply System: Management History, Water Crisis, and Learning

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

How the water crisis maintained considering the present population ?

Author have not highlighted the same in the article.

What is the impact of drought? Have you considered drought events ?

Is there any indices you have considered ?

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 01,

 

We thank you once again for the reviewer's comments and that we try to respond to all of them, as follows:

Reviewer's comment 01 - Does the introduction provide sufficient background and include all relevant references?             

We add the purposes of the article in the final lines of the introduction (79-84). I believe that this way we managed to respond to comment 01.

 

Reviewer's comment 02 - Are all the cited references relevant to the research?           

We believe so, since the article addresses several situations of different stages of construction and operation of large hydraulic structures in SPRM. In this way, many articles and references were consulted and cited.

 

Reviewer's comment 03 - Is the research design appropriate?        

The initial objective of the article was to discuss only the technical aspects of the construction and operation of the Cantareira System before and after the 2014/15 Water Crisis. After the first review, other major structures and their interference in the SPRM were incorporated into the manuscript. After the second review, we believe we have managed to show the complexity involved and give a more scientific and appropriate character to the Hydrology and Economics/Human Health special edition of the Hydrology journal.

 

Reviewer's comment 04 - Are the methods adequately described?     

We believe that in the revised manuscript this deficiency was resolved, with minor corrections and discussion of the economic impacts resulting from the 2014/2015 water crisis.

 

Reviewer's comment 05 - Are the results clearly presented?      

We supplemented the results with the addition of lines 608-623 and believe we have resolved this shortcoming.

 

Reviewer's comment 06 - Are the conclusions supported by the results?   

As answered in the previous query, we supplemented the results with the addition of lines 608-623 and believe we have resolved this shortcoming.

 

Reviewer's comment 07 - How the water crisis maintained considering the present population ?    

The authors inserted a new item "dealing with the water crisis", and what measures were taken to guarantee the supply in the future (lines 392-439)

 

Reviewer's comment 08 - Author have not highlighted the same in the article.    

The authors apologize as they all made some changes to the text and it may be that, at some point, we got lost in the review process. We believe we have resolved this issue.

 

Reviewer's comment 09 - What is the impact of drought? Have you considered drought events?     

We added a specific item on the economic impacts of the 2014/2015 water crisis (lines 347-390).

 

Reviewer's comment 10 - Is there any indices you have considered ?      

This is sensitive information. The 2014/2015 water crisis occurred during an election campaign, so many decisions were made due to immediate political interests, which may have exacerbated the crisis. However, we cannot enter into this discussion. We only use official information. We can't get out of that line. On lines (347-390) some officially released indices are presented.

 

Thanks again to the reviewer and we hope he/she understands our position.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

Brief summary

Authors took into consideration the reviewer comments and so I think the paper should be published, after the minor amendments listed below.

 

Specific comments

Suggest changing “SPRM”, “SPMA” and “RMSP” to “SPMR”.

Explicit what “Sabesp” means.

Line 363: should it be “Sabesp” instead of “Sabep”?

English is fine!

Author Response

We thank you once again for the reviewer's comments and that we try to respond to all of them.

The authors revised the English language throughout the manuscript, which are highlighted in the body of the text.

The authors are grateful once again for the comments and suggestions of Reviewer 01.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1.What is the limitations in your study?
2. Highlight the innovativeness and novelty in the introduction section
3. Rewrite the conclusion as per the work carried out by the author
3. How many parameters and ESR were considered?
4. Introduction section need to be strengthen.
5. What is the outcome from experimental results?
6. Have you considered future demand ?
7. Have you considered future water supply system as per the demand generated or calculated ?
8. How author have calculated demand of water ?
9. Which type of area it is flood prone or drought probe ?

Reviewer 2 Report

Brief summary

This paper is interesting for those interested in water resources management.

It presents an interesting water resources management case study from a region in Brasil that observed a great population growth. The increase of the water demand and the reduction of rainfall observed in the last century, with some severe droughts, created a water crisis. The paper presents the history of the problem in this region and the solutions that have been implemented, from the original design to the water crisis mitigation.

Although, in my opinion, this is not a traditional scientific paper, it is an interesting case study that deserves to be shared with the scientific community, and so I think it should be published, after minor amendments listed below.

Specific comments

Lines 67-68: suggest changing to “The water of the headwaters of the Piracicaba river is transferred to”.

Line 85: suggest changing to “Figure 1”.

Line 100: should it be “SPMR” instead of “SPMA”?

Line 144: suggest changing to “accumulating small series of hydrological records, between 22 and 27 years.”.

Line 145: suggest changing to “Figure 1”.

Line 158: should it be “SPMR” instead of “SPMA”?

Line 215: please explicit the meaning of “ANA”.

Table 3: please explicit the meaning of “SPAC”.

Table 5: suggest changing to “5 special operation”.

Line 522: suggest changing to “with the withdrawal target as can be observed in Table 6”.