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The first village of micro-houses was built close to the banks of the Tiete River, in the neighbourhood of Canindé.

TV images showed lanes of the Marginal Tiete expressway falling into a widening pit alongside the construction site.

In one image, a discarded sofa lies beached in the Tiete river, in Brazil’s biggest city Sao Paulo, into which hundreds of tonnes of untreated sewage and waste are tipped each day.

The Tiete and Pinheiros rivers overflowed, flooding nearby highways and trapping drivers and passengers for hours.

The civil action concerned an environmental management plan for a protected area around the River �վ����ê in São Paulo state.