ITHACA, N.Y. — Tompkins County legislators have passed a resolution urging the federal government to provide immediate support for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands as the territories struggle to recover after powerful hurricanes.
The resolution supported New York’s efforts so far aiding Puerto Rico and urged the federal government to provide immediate additional support for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Now, millions of U.S. citizens are without electricity and lack basic necessities and access to drinking water.
Legislator Carol Chock, who represents District 3, brought the resolution titled "Resolution in Support of New York State Aid to Puerto Rico and Urging Our Federal Government to Provide Immediate Additional Support for Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands" to the table Tuesday to Tompkins County Legislature and it was unanimously supported.
"Many of them with terrible consequences without us weighing in, but this one is different.
"We pay significant taxes, as do the residents of Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands, in part so the federal government will be able to provide emergency support."
In the wake of these storms, Tompkins County residents have been doing what they can to help the situation in Puerto, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Florida and Texas.
* NOTE: As of 10/2/2017, over half the population of Puerto Rico lack clean drinking water, only one of its 69 hospitals is fully functional, 80% of the crops were destroyed, 91% of cellular communications sites and 1,360 of the 1,600 cell phone towers were toppled, 85% of telephone and internet cables were destroyed and only 5% of the island’s electricity is in service. While the U.S. Virgin Islands have potable water, food and services, many homes remain without roofs or temporary roof coverings.

The sustainable environment is required for ensuring human rights as every human has right to live in a safe and secure environment.
The use of water has increased with the growth of the population for the past century. The one-sixth of the world’s population has no access to safe drinking water. There is an improvement in sanitation world-wide particularly, in developing regions.
According to the recent 2009 MDG Report of UN the growth of four goals of poverty reduction, universal primary education, reduced child mortality and some dimensions of environmental degradation like ozone depletion are not given due importance. In every region, the living standard of the urban poor has improved but a growth of slum areas cannot be overlooked. It shows the efforts to preserve the natural resource is not effective in the context of climate change, fisheries, forest, and water depletion.
Despite the efforts of the UN and other advocacy groups from around the world the progress toward environmental justice has been slow.
The environmental degradation is affecting different segments of the society particularly, the marginalized people who are deprived of their basic needs. The abuse of human rights is apparent in different regions in terms of resource distribution.

The people of Isiagu community in Awka South Local Government Area of Anambra State have appealed to the Federal and state governments to come to their aid by providing potable water and access roads, which are virtually non-existent in the area.
They made the appeal through their traditional ruler, HRH Igwe Augustine Nwankwo (Igwe Agu) who spoke during a press conference ahead of the 2017 New Yam festival yesterday.
According to the community, “we need clean water for drinking and other domestic and industrial needs. Sinking of borehole here is tasking, consequently, it’s only in my palace that there is a borehole in the whole community and everyone fetches from it.
“We, therefore, appeal to the state and national assemblies, Anambra State and Federal Governments to assist us.

Two weeks after Hurricane Maria made landfall, more than half of Puerto Rico’s 3.4 million residents still don’t have access to clean drinking water. Luckily there may be a relatively easy solution, developed by Seattle gear company Mountain Safety Research.
You’re likely familiar with MSR’s snowshoes, backpacking stoves, and water filters, which are all designed and built in Washington. MSR also makes water-cleaning products for the U.S. military, which means they have one of the most well-equipped water labs in the world. For the last few years, that lab has focused on trying to create tools that provide clean drinking water to rural communities in developing nations, and in the wake of natural disasters.
Municipal water is typically disinfected with chlorine, which removes pathogens like cholera, dysentery, and typhoid—diseases that become more likely after a natural disaster that damages water storage, or pollutes sources. But chlorine has a short shelf life, making it difficult to store and ship.
In response, MSR has developed a simple, robust, and affordable way to make relatively large quantities of chlorine using a limited amount of common household supplies. All its Community Chlorine Maker needs is water, salt, and a 12V battery.
To treat water, just pour the resulting chlorine into a water container.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico: Locked out of his home and with nowhere else to go, Wilfredo Ortiz Marrero rode out Hurricane Maria inside a Jeep, which was lifted off its wheels by floodwaters in the parking lot. He then endured days without enough food or running water.
The lights are back on at his residence for low-income elderly people in the San Juan suburb of Trujillo Alta, and food has started arriving, but he still waits as long as he can each night to leave the company of others in the lobby.
The hurricane that pummeled Puerto Rico two weeks ago and the scarcity-marked aftermath are taking a toll on islanders’ equilibrium.
Students and staff at Ponce Health Sciences University are visiting shelters and people in the hardest-hit communities to provide psychological help, among other services, said Alex Ruiz, special assistant to the university’s president.
He said 20 deaths resulted directly from the storm, including drownings and those killed in mudslides.
The count also includes sick and elderly who died in the aftermath of the hurricane, including some who died because oxygen could not be delivered amid power outages. There were also two suicides, but Rossello did not provide details of those.

The City of Cape Town is currently in Phase 1, with water rationing through extreme pressure reduction. If rationing and savings are not successful, we risk entering Phase 2, which is a disaster stage followed by Phase 3, the extreme disaster phase, where the city would be incapable of drawing water from its surface dams.
Today, as part of our regular updates on the drought crisis, I am announcing key aspects of the City of Cape Town’s Critical Water Shortages Disaster Plan.
If consumption is not reduced to the required levels of 500-million litres of collective usage per day, we are looking at about March 2018 when supply of municipal water would not be available.
In terms of our Water Resilience Plan to augment supply with new schemes, we are expecting the first water to come online by approximately December 2017/January 2018 if all goes according to plan.
In terms of our Critical Water Shortages Disaster Plan, as with all parts of our operations, we have a disaster plan for all eventualities as every organisation does as part of risk management.
We ask water users to store up to five litres of municipal drinking water only for essential usage.
The difference between Phases 1 and 2 is that in Phase 1 we are rationing the whole system with reduced supply.
This extreme can only be avoided if we all do what we need to do now to save water.
It is therefore necessary that the city and its residents and stakeholders plan for such a situation if it were to occur.

A shocking video shows garbage rushing down a river in Chimaltenango, Guatemala.
The video shows a horrified group of onlookers observing the free-flowing trash polluting the river.
The river is located in San Andrés Itzapa, a municipality of Chimaltenango in southeastern Guatemala.
The caption on the video says: ‘This is a collateral damage that these communities are used to live.’
‘Because of the irresponsibility of the people of San Andrés Itzapa, as they deposit the garbage in clandestine places, and when the rainy season comes the trash goes down to all these sectors,’ it continues.
In 2015, La Pasión River was contaminated with pesticides and caused an ecological disaster that affected 23 fish species.
Locals also depended on the river for drinking water.

– The Louisiana Department of Health has awarded a $2.31 million loan to DeSoto Parish to improve its drinking water.
In addition to the loan, which is through the State’s Drinking Water Revolving Loan Fund, the DeSoto water system also received a grant from the Drinking Water Capitalization Grant that pays for the first $462,000 of the loan (principal forgiveness).
The loan was closed in August, and will be used to construct a Magnetic Ion Resin Exchange pre-treatment system. This technology is used to reduce natural organic matter and dissolved organic carbon in drinking water, which will aid the water system in reducing its harmful disinfection byproducts.
1 John Neilson said, “Our goal is always to provide the highest-quality drinking water to our customers.
It is administered by LDH’s Office of Public Health.
Once a loan is approved, water systems can use the funds to make their improvements. As the systems pay back the loans, the principal and interest are used to make more money available for other communities that have drinking water needs.

Delafield says it’s rare that the organization works within the United States, but they’ve done so previously when needed. She described Puerto Rico as a place in desperate need of assistance.
“The next step is we need to be looking at laying the foundation for a strong recovery.
The department has also placed a liaison in each hospital that’s open, to make sure the facilities can get timely shipments of fuel needed to keep generators running, as well as medical supplies.
Organizations such as Mercy Corps are on the ground as well, doing what they can to help with the recovery.
“But people are strong.

The situation is dire across much of the island but even more so for its most vulnerable, low-income minority communities.
Only about half the territory’s residents had access to potable drinking water, and electricity had been restored to just 5 percent of Puerto Rico as of Tuesday, when President Donald Trump visited the capital, San Juan, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The community is plagued by untreated sewage that flows into the adjacent Martín Peña Channel.
"People are drinking whatever comes from the faucet, and it’s turbid," said Lyvia Rodríguez del Valle, executive director of the Caño Martín Peña Land Trust Project Corporation, a public-private partnership working with the community. "People lost their roofs.
"We have barely seen the government here," Rodríguez del Valle said.
"I’m concerned about typhoid, paratyphoid and shigella [bacterial diseases that can spread through non-potable water] on the diarrheal side and the vector-borne diseases, especially dengue, because we have dengue in Puerto Rico every year anyway," Hotez said.
"I don’t know why were are not getting the kinds of things that are basic necessities 13 days out from Hurricane Maria," Santiago said.
Marcella Chiapperino lost her home and business in Frederiksted, St. Croix, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, to Hurricane Maria after both had been battered by Hurricane Irma two weeks before.