Known as Juribatuba River, in the colonial period, the present Pinheiros River is derived of the encounter of the rivers Grande and Guarapiranga. Its current name comes from a hamlet created by the Jesuits, in 1560, called Pinheiros, which the access was by the Pinheiros Way, today, the Consolação Street.
Little by little, its banks were occupied. In 1607, began the iron production at the Virapoeira croft. Among the owners of those lands, were the rusher Paes Leme, the “bushman” Afonso Sardinha and Bento Amaral e Silva. With the takeover of those grounds, the Indians were expropriated of their lands. (São Paulo, 2014a)
At the beginning of the 20th century, immigrants, Italians and Japanese, installed themselves at the banks, harnessing of its characteristics for profit. At the same period, Brazilian Traction Light & Power Co. Ltd, known as Light, struggled for the concession of the Pinheiros River’s valley, with the initial objective of increasing the generation of hydroelectric energy.
In the ‘20s, the company invited the engineer Asa White Kenney Billings, to assist the process of urbanization of the River’s dales. The Pinheiros River determined the city’s limit, and, to expand it, would be necessary to generate even more energy. Taking advantage of the hydric capacity of the region, Billings has built two dams (Guarapiranga and Billings), an elevation plant (Traição) and an airlock next to Tietê River, that reversed the river, channelling it to a fall at Serra do Mar. Thus has been installed the Henry Borden Electric Plant. (São Paulo, 2014b)
In 1927, by the law 2.249, was conceded to Light the right to channelize, enlarge, rectify and deepen the beds of the Pinheiros River, its tributaries Grande and Guarapiranga and the downstream of the respective flooding zones. The law declared public utility of the lands and other indispensable assets to those constructions, and public necessity the flooding areas, or subject to flooding, sanitized or beneficed in consequence of those services. To Light, was conceded the right to expropriation of the goods and lands to accomplish the works, but to do so should submit the plans of execution to previous approval of the Executive Power. As the geographer Odette Seabra points out, “on assigning the character of ‘public necessity’ to the flooding lands, their utility was led to abstraction, not being specified any use”. Light could, by expropriation projects, appropriate itself of those lands, been obligated to sell them, whereas were benefits arising the constructions in progress. (SEABRA, 1987)
In 1929, happens the worst flooding in the city of São Paulo. Firstly assigned to the rains at the headwaters, the articles published by the press led to public knowledge the opening of the dams and highlighted the releasing of the Guarapiranga’s waters through the drain. The floods of 1929 have made official the limits of the lands under Light’s property.
From the ‘30s onwards, claiming it could end the floods, drain the wetlands and incorporate them at the urban space and channelize the waters to the Billings reservoir, Light has instituted the works of rectification of the Pinheiros River, which lasted until the ‘50s.
Following up to the copious interferences at its banks, we have the channelization, construction of highways (such as the Marginal Pinheiros); the sewage system (which receives waste of about 400 thousand families and effluents of 290 industries). (São Paulo, 2014a)
The River was isolated from the population. Even before its pollution. The affectivity of the population is compromised by years and years of intervention. The “semióforo”, the value which cannot be measured, its symbolic meaning, the sign that comes from the past, finds it self hidden in darkness in those who dare to look at it. (Chauí, 2011)