Simplicio Hydroelectric Complex

Simplicio Hydroelectric Complex Courtesy Shaw Environmental and Infrastructure Group

Rio needs 30 percent more power for the upcoming Summer Olympics and World Cup. Hydroelectricity supplies 90 percent of Brazil’s fledgling 1,500-mile grid, but tapping the city’s nearest source of water would have required building a dam that would have flooded a city of 130,000. Instead, the state utility created the world’s largest construction project. It rerouted 780 billion gallons of water through a 15-mile landscape of seven mountains
and 13 man-made channels.