On a summer evening as the sky turned pink and gold over the tobacco fields in Sampson County, farmworker José Luis Cipriano handed Juan Carabaña plastic bags filled with cucumbers and corn, a humble thank you to Carabaña’s ministry for helping workers stay hydrated in the fields.
On this night, Carabaña delivered about 70 water carriers to farmworkers at various farms in Sampson County, the first round of deliveries.
The pouches hold water bottles so farmworkers can stay hydrated during their work day.
Travis Long tlong@newsobserver.com The ministry launched a campaign, “Water in the Fields,” that aims to raise $25,000 through Indiegogo, a crowdfunding website, to produce 3,000 water carriers for local farmworkers.
The ministry has raised $9,000, according to its Indiegogo page, and plans to deliver as many water carriers it can even if the 3,000 goal isn’t met.
Access to water varies from farm to farm in North Carolina, Carabaña said.
“If the rows are long, they can carry their water in the pouches and not have to wait until they get to one end or if they carry the water bottle in their pockets it won’t get warm by the transfer of their body heat,” Hernández said.
The improved design has a flap, a wool insert to keep the liquid cool, narrow loops to keep the carrier close to the waist and two position options.
As he handed out the carriers in Sampson County, Carabaña asked the farmworkers to give him feedback on the new design, so the ministry can make changes if necessary.
Cipriano, the farmworker who gave the ministry cucumbers and corn, greeted Carabaña with the GSA carrier attached to his belt.

‘More than 4bn people worldwide lack safe water, sanitation’.
Around 4.4 billion people lack safely managed sanitation and around 2.1 billion lack access to safe, readily available water at home, a new report by the WHO and Unicef has revealed.
"Safe water, sanitation and hygiene at home should not be a privilege of only those who are rich or live in urban centres," said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General, World Health Organisation (WHO).
This puts the health of all people, especially young children, at risk for diseases, such as diarrhoea.
"As a result, every year 3,61,000 children under five years die due to diarrhoea.
Poor sanitation and contaminated water are also linked to transmission of diseases such as cholera, dysentery, hepatitis A, and typhoid," it said.
"Safe water, effective sanitation and hygiene are critical to the health of every child and every community," said United Nations Children’s Fund Executive Director Anthony Lake.
The Indian government has also launched an ambitious Swachch Bharat campaign with making villages and cities free of open defecation as one of its primary objectives.
The government is assisting households to build clean toilets.
The report found that in 90 countries progress towards basic sanitation is too slow, meaning they will not reach universal coverage by 2030.

Large Shark Attacks Kayaker Off Santa Cruz; Water Access Restricted.
SANTA CRUZ (CBS SF) — A kayaker was attacked by a large shark in the waters off Santa Cruz Beach Tuesday morning, according to authorities.
A call came in at 11:01 a.m. about the attack near West Cliff and Pelton Avenue, according to the Santa Cruz Fire Department.
Marine Safety personnel confirmed the attack happened about a mile out from Steamer Lane.
The kayaker was not injured, but the kayak sustained extensive damage with a bite mark from the shark’s teeth visible on the underside.
The City of Santa Cruz is posting shark warning notices along a one-mile radius where the attacked happened for the next four days.
All water activities at beaches, including Main Beach and Cowell Beach, are prohibited until sunrise Saturday morning, according to the city.
Steve Lawson later said in an interview with KSBW, the shark was a great white.
He used his marine radio to call harbor patrol.
” This is a reminder that swimming in the ocean does carry some risk and we encourage all swimmers, surfers and kayakers to be mindful of their surroundings and follow directions of lifeguards and Marine Safety staff.”

GRAND RAPIDS, MICH. – “Pets are members of our families and we are eager to bring them wherever we go and that includes boating,” said Dr. Jennifer Welser, chief medical officer of BluePearl Veterinary Partners.
The Coast Guard also recommends for people to have a VHF-FM marine radio, an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB), a dewatering device and a first aid kit.
In addition to those general safety requirements and suggestions, veterinarians from BluePearl Veterinary Partners recommend these basic precautions when boating with pets: Heat stroke and heat exhaustion are life-threatening to both people and pets.
Pets need access to ample fresh drinking water when on a boat to keep their body temperature in the normal range.
Make sure engines are not engaged while people or pets are in the water.
Your pet may become fatigued and, therefore, susceptible to injury due to the constant movement and balancing they have to do.
If you want to keep them from moving around in the vessel make sure the leash is short enough to keep them out of trouble, especially being able to jump overboard while the boat is moving.
Consider purchasing a life jacket or other pet-safe floatation device.
Dog life jackets with handles on the back and chest harnesses with handles are great so you can help them get back in the boat shout they end up in the water intentionally or unintentionally.
“Most importantly, we want to make sure people and their pets spend every day on the water safely,” said Welser.

GRAND RAPIDS, MICH. – “Pets are members of our families and we are eager to bring them wherever we go and that includes boating,” said Dr. Jennifer Welser, chief medical officer of BluePearl Veterinary Partners.
The Coast Guard also recommends for people to have a VHF-FM marine radio, an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB), a dewatering device and a first aid kit.
In addition to those general safety requirements and suggestions, veterinarians from BluePearl Veterinary Partners recommend these basic precautions when boating with pets: Heat stroke and heat exhaustion are life-threatening to both people and pets.
Pets need access to ample fresh drinking water when on a boat to keep their body temperature in the normal range.
Make sure engines are not engaged while people or pets are in the water.
Your pet may become fatigued and, therefore, susceptible to injury due to the constant movement and balancing they have to do.
If you want to keep them from moving around in the vessel make sure the leash is short enough to keep them out of trouble, especially being able to jump overboard while the boat is moving.
Consider purchasing a life jacket or other pet-safe floatation device.
Dog life jackets with handles on the back and chest harnesses with handles are great so you can help them get back in the boat shout they end up in the water intentionally or unintentionally.
“Most importantly, we want to make sure people and their pets spend every day on the water safely,” said Welser.

Do you use the Internet?
The new FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, is leading a dangerous effort to roll back net neutrality rules that keep Internet service providers (ISPs) from engaging in data discrimination, like slowing down Internet speeds for some content and charging a fee for “fast lanes.” Team Internet is speaking out Wednesday to defend net neutrality.
Here’s the key problem net neutrality rules help fix: Because most Americans have only one choice for high-speed broadband service, ISPs such as Comcast (cmcsa, +0.58%) and AT&T (t, -1.55%) have tremendous power to funnel customers to their own content, or offer “fast lanes” to a few platforms that can pay for special access to customers.
Net neutrality rules prevent them from doing that.
That idea has helped foster an explosion of economic growth.
Anyone who wants to offer a new Internet service can reach everyone on the Internet, without paying extra fees to any provider.
Users, in turn, can make their own choices about which services they want to use—including the next Twitter (twtr, -0.08%)/Facebook (fb, +0.04%)/Snapchat (snap, +4.13%) that’s being created in someone’s basement right now.
That idea has also helped galvanize a wealth of political expression and organizing.
Conservative activists from around the country coalesced over various social networking platforms to form the Tea Party movement.
So Team Internet is stepping up once again to tell the FCC that it works for the American people, not Comcast, Verizon (vz, +0.28%), or AT&T.

2 Billion People Don’t Have Access To Clean Water, Opens up Fissures of Inequality.
Africa, Development & Aid, Economy & Trade, Environment, Featured, Food & Agriculture, Global, Headlines, Health, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, Natural Resources, Water & Sanitation, Women’s Health UNITED NATIONS, Jul 13 2017 (IPS) – More than two billion people lack access to clean and safe drinking water, according to a new report released by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Although significant progress to ensure access to drinking water has been achieved, there is still a long way to go to ensure its quality—deemed free from pollutants and safe for drinking.
As many as 400 million people still rely on distant water sources—travelling to and fro from their homes to pick it up.
Some 159 million people, according to the report, rely on untreated water from lakes and streams.
“Every day, 800 children under the age of five die from waterborne diseases like diarrhoea.
A lack of access to clean drinking water is also bad news for hygiene and sanitary levels.
In many countries, open defecation due to the lack of in-house toilets poses a significant challenge.
While the global drop in open defecation from 20 to 12 percent between 2000 and 2015 is a welcome fact, the rate of decline, at just .7 percent every year, puts pressure on governments to do more.
Still, some countries like Ethiopia have combatted the issue of open defecation successfully.

Rabat – A report by WHO and UNICEF shows that 2.1 billion people lack safe drinking water at home and 4.5 billion lack safely managed sanitation. While billions of people have gained access to drinking water and sanitation services in the last twenty years, WHO’s report shows that safe water and sanitation is not necessarily guaranteed, especially in rural areas. Large populations are put at risk when homes, health facilities, and schools lack soap and water for hand washing. As a result, 361,000 children under 5 years old die every year of diarrhea. “Safe water, sanitation, and hygiene at home should not be a privilege of only those who are rich or live in urban centers,” says WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “These are some of the most basic…

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — An agreement has reportedly been reached between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Israeli Water Authority that will result in the flow of “tens of millions of cubic meters of water to the PA and Gaza,” according to a Thursday report from Israeli news website Arutz Sheva. Arutz Sheva reported that the Red Sea-Dead Sea conveyance project, which was first proposed over a decade ago in an effort to study and amend the degradation of the Dead Sea — which borders Jordan and the occupied West Bank — was agreed upon under the mediation of the United States. In 2005, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority sent a joint letter to the World Bank requesting a study to investigate the feasibility of reversing the environmental degradation of the Dead Sea by transferring water through a canal from the Red Sea.US special envoy to the Middle East Jason Greenblatt held a press conference lauding the agreement, saying “the US welcomes the agreement reached between the PA and the government of Israel which will allow for the sale of 33 million cubic meters of water from Israel to the PA.”The details of how the sales would be conducted and the larger implementation of the plan remained…

Typical low-tech, portable, field test methods for chemical water quality monitoring fall into three categories: Test strips – These are small, single-use strips that change color to indicate the concentration of a specific chemical.
The user rotates the color disk to find the part that best matches the color of the sample, and then reads the concentration of the chemical from the disk.
Arsenic: Portable field testing options for arsenic are limited; this contaminant is best measured in a laboratory.
Nitrate can also be measured with a digital meter.
Iron and Manganese: Both test strips and color disk tests are available for these two metals, which may also be measured using portable, digital instruments.
There is no test strip or color disk kit that can be used here, although at least one conductivity meter interfaces with a smartphone.
pH: pH test strips and color disk tests are widely available.
Depending on local conditions and on the focus of a water quality monitoring project, more chemical tests can be added.
[1] If previous testing has established that arsenic and fluoride are not a concern in a particular water system, these two parameters may be omitted in favor of more locally relevant ones.
Arsenic and fluoride contamination can also be caused by human activity like mining or industrial waste discharge.