’50pc Pakistanis lack access to toilet, 11pc to safe drinking water’

* Seminar stresses need to build people-friendly economy

originally posted on January 31, 2017

 

LAHORE: Speakers at a seminar titled ‘Equality and human economy’ on Monday stressed the need to build people-friendly economy to benefit all and sundry.

The seminar was organised by the Indus Consortium and Rise for Equality at the Alhamra Cultural Complex.

Indus Consortium Programme Manager Fiza Qureshi gave a presentation on human economy while HELP Foundation Executive Director Jamshid Fareed highlighted efforts to end inequalities.

Present at the seminar, Singer Jawad Ahmed discussed poverty situation in Pakistan. He emphasised the need for making well-planned efforts to remove disparities causing inequality. He urged the youth to focus on research work in various areas. He said that more than 43 million were living under poverty line and another 45 million living at the threshold level.

Fiza Qureshi said that world’s biggest issue was economic inequality. Quoting reports of Oxfam, World Bank and World Economic Forum, she said, “One out of ten persons in the world still have to sleep hungry”.

She said that eight billionaires have had as much wealth as half the world. She said that the economic managers of various governments need to work for poor, ignored and marginalised segments of the society. The governments need to cooperate for economic growth. She suggested that technology should be used to increase employment opportunities and not for curtailing jobs.

“By any measures we are living in the age of super-rich, a second gilded age in which a glittering surface masks social problems and corruption. Oxfam’s analysis of the super rich includes all those individuals with a net worth of at least $1 billion.

HELP Foundation Executive Director Jamshid Fareed said that indirect taxes were unjust and unfair, as the poor who have no taxable income are taxed at the same rate as the rich. He said that the prevailing regressive taxation needs transformation into progressive tax system.

He said that according to the report titled ‘poor social indicators’, 25 million children are out of school; 45 million people are undernourished; more than half of Pakistani population don’t have access to toilets; about 11% don’t have access to improved drinking water sources.

The report recommends that the power to change is in people’s hand. It said that the people, who elected their government, should push it to be pushed into action to stop it from serving the rich elites and transform the prevailing regressive taxation into progressive tax system.

Small / women farmers from rural areas of Layyah, Rajanpur, Muzaffargarh and Multan were also present during the event to share real life experiences of bearing the brunt of taxation on household items, agriculture inputs and other essentials of daily life.

Syrian army seizes Damascus water source as rebels withdraw

originally posted on January 28, 2017

 

Beirut: Syrian government forces took back control of an area near Damascus that provides most of the capital’s water supplies after reaching a deal for rebel fighters to withdraw, pro-government media and a monitoring group said.

The Syrian army and its allies launched an offensive last month to drive insurgents from the Wadi Barada valley, which they have controlled since 2012, and to recapture a major spring and pumping station.

Syria’s mainstream rebel factions are under intense pressure after losing areas they held in the northern city of Aleppo to government forces at the end of last year, and now face a fierce assault by militants elsewhere.

Wadi Barada, which lies northwest of Damascus, has become one of the fiercest battlefronts in Syria’s civil war. Disruption to water supplies, including infrastructure damage, has caused acute shortages in the capital this month.

Government forces entered the village of Ain al-Fija, where the spring and pumping station are located, early on Saturday, a military media unit run by Lebanese group Hezbollah, an ally of Damascus, reported.

“The Syrian army has entered Ain Al Fija… and raised the Syrian flag over the spring installation,” a statement by the unit said, adding that the development was due to a deal reached with insurgents by which the rebels would leave the area.

Teams were preparing to enter Ain Al Fija to fix the pumping station and the army had secured control of the village, it added.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based war monitoring group, said government forces had begun moving into the spring area as rebel fighters withdrew.

Under the deal reached between the government side and local representatives, rebels hailing from outside the Wadi Barada area would leave for the northwestern province of Idlib, an insurgent stronghold, carrying light weapons, the Observatory said.

Rebels from Wadi Barada would be allowed to leave too, but could also opt to stay and serve with pro-government forces, it added.

The Syrian government has struck similar local ceasefire deals with the opposition in several western parts of the country, usually involving the transfer of rebel fighters and their families to Idlib.

The opposition has said the process amounts to forced population transfer.

Intense fighting raged for weeks in Wadi Barada, and knocked the water spring out of service in late December.

The United Nations has said “infrastructure was deliberately targeted”, without saying who was responsible, leaving four million people in Damascus without safe drinking water. It warned the shortages could lead to outbreaks of waterborne disease.

Rebels and activists have said government bombardment damaged the spring. The government said insurgent groups polluted it with diesel, forcing the state to cut supplies.

Rebels in Wadi Barada had been allowing government engineers to maintain and operate the valley’s pumping station. Fighters have, however, cut water supplies several times in the past to put pressure on the army not to overrun the area.

Worrying and still waiting for safe drinking water after cancer claimed her daughter

by  Mark Grossi, originally posted on January 29, 2017

 

SEVILLE- For years, Rebecca Quintana had been a highly visible activist in the fight for safe drinking water, speaking regularly with reporters, rallying residents and helping to spark an unprecedented United Nations inspection in northern Tulare County.

But, strolling past the town’s old contaminated well now, she talks about her more personal battle. Her 34-year-old daughter, Regina Lujan, died in 2015 from cancer. Pregnant with her second son, Lujan had asked a haunting question about her stage 4 breast cancer.

Did the contamination nightmare in Seville cause it?

Quintana had simply told her daughter that the illness was a mystery, saying there was no history of breast cancer in her family.

Lujan hadn’t grown up in Seville, but she spent summers there at her grandparents’ home where Quintana had been raised. Lujan drank the tap water in Seville each summer and during many visits.

Quintana, 60, is raising Lujan’s younger son in nearby Visalia, maintaining her Seville residence – the home her parents built – and still wrestling with her daughter’s question. Quintana knew there was no way to directly link the breast cancer to the nitrate-laced drinking water.

“But you still can’t help wondering if there was a connection,” Quintana says. “We’ve had so much trouble with drinking water. It’s hard to live with that.”

The well was shut down in 2015, mostly because California’s epic five-year drought nearly dried it up. In that way, the drought was a blessing, Quintana says. The town got a state-sponsored emergency well, but Seville’s dilapidated pipes still periodically spit out sand, bacteria-laden water and, occasionally, a tadpole.

The state has come up with $5 million to rebuild the piping system this year, and there are plans to get healthier drinking water. This might be the year that people can stop buying bottled water in Seville.

But a decade after the fight began to clean up the water system, it still is risky to drink tap water in this farmworker community. About 500 residents still are waiting to get what most Californians take for granted – a safe drink of water from the tap.

Worrying and waiting

Across a wide, rural swath of the San Joaquin Valley, people have long been unnerved about drinking the sporadically contaminated tap water. It’s not as high-profile as lead contamination in Flint, Mich., but people here have good reason to worry, say scientists.

Nitrates from decades of use of fertilizers in the Valley’s world-class farm belt threaten the water for more than 200,000 people, according to a 2012 UC Davis study.

Nitrates, which also come from leaky septic systems, sewage treatment and dairy waste, are linked to birth defects, a potentially fatal blood disease in infants, thyroid cancer and other problems, ranging from depression to nervous system disorders.

The state is working on a nitrate cleanup approach, which may include fees on farmers to help pay not only for the cleanup but possibly to help small towns. Nitrate contamination is, by far, the most widespread problem in the San Joaquin Valley, but it’s not the only concern.

Other contaminants include arsenic, coliform and pesticides. One powerful contaminant, 1,2,3-trichloropropane (1,2,3-TCP), is a “garbage” or waste chemical, dumped into a now-banned farm fumigant many decades ago, according to records in a lawsuit over the chemical.

The city of Clovis in December won a $22 million lawsuit against the fumigant manufacturer, Shell Oil Co. But the chemical, a likely carcinogen, has not yet been regulated by the state of California.

The bigger crisis

As troubling as dirty drinking water might be, it is just a fraction of the environmental stresses that are leading to early mortality in rural pockets of poverty, researchers say.

Cumulative environmental and socio-economic burdens are killing rural residents up to 25 years younger than people who live in larger cities only 10 miles away, scientists say.

What burdens? Aside from contaminated water, consider poverty, lack of education, air pollution, pesticides, low birth weights and asthma.

Children are quite vulnerable to the cumulative environmental stress, says John Capitman, executive director of the Central Valley Health Policy Institute at Fresno State and an author of a 2012 study called “Place matters for health in the San Joaquin Valley.”

The study confirmed dark suspicions about living in this heavily farmed region. Childhood cancer clusters in McFarland and Earlimart and birth defects in Kettleman City have made headlines in the last three decades.

“The findings in the study are shocking,” Capitman says. “To see such differences in life expectancy is dramatic. Why aren’t public authorities doing more? That’s a good question.”

Over the last four years, state officials have been refining an innovative health assessment tool and evaluating communities in detail.

Officials say it is designed to guide public policy decisions, not rank the riskiest places to live. But scientists, such as Capitman, say significant health risks are obvious.

The state calls the analysis CalEnviroScreen, which looks at more than a dozen categories of pollution and environmental factors as well as many socio-economic factors.

“Rather than looking at individual types of pollution in isolation, CalEnviroScreen helps policymakers and scientists examine multiple pollutants and factors at once,” George Alexeeff, director of the state’s Office of Environmental Hazard Health Assessment, says on the state’s website.

Among California’s 8,000 census tracts, the worst of the worst are in the Valley. The rural southwest edge of Fresno is the worst in the state – more dangerous than poverty pockets in East Los Angeles and Oakland. Dozens of rural San Joaquin Valley communities in eight counties are among the worst 10 percent in California.

In the last two years, the state has made plans to move these “disadvantaged communities” to the head of the line for the millions of dollars available from the state’s greenhouse gas cap-and-trade auctions. The idea is to raise the quality of life with environmentally friendly projects.

But the program is in its infancy, and people have been focused on the state’s most intense five-year drought on record, which only now is beginning to ease.

Stories have appeared in national media, such as the Los Angeles Times, about people living through the brutally hot Valley summer without indoor plumbing, inviting comparisons between Third World conditions and California, a state with the world’s eighth-largest economy. In some places, outhouses were placed in yards not far from children’s toys and picnic tables.

The state responded, sending a sea of bottled water and pushing harder to make millions of dollars available for emergency wells. In East Porterville, residents organized to distribute bottled water among 7,000 people. A familiar sight was a porch or patio filled with boxes of bottled water.

Maria Jimenez, who lived in 2015 in the Tulare County town of Monson, captured scant rainfall in a bucket on top of her roof to help flush the toilet. The well at the rental had gone dry.

“It’s at least some water,” she said at the time, adding that it was something people do in Mexico.

In neighborhoods, outdoor water tanks have appeared. People have disconnected from their dry wells and hooked up their plumbing to the tanks, which are refilled periodically.

It wasn’t just the lack of storms that dried those wells. The San Joaquin Valley farm industry, worth more than $30 billion, needed to pump water just to survive.

Farmers who usually buy river water from government water projects had been left high and dry. As their wells went dry, they drilled new ones as deep as 2,500 feet and pumped around the clock, desperately maintaining precious orchard crops while letting some other fields die.

Water tables plummeted and parts of the landscape sank two feet.

For rural residents, the drought simply made a stressful life worse. People living on wages near the poverty line already were paying up to $60 a month for tap water they couldn’t drink.

Politics, money, delay

Activists and advocates privately fear problems with state funding bureaucracies and local political problems will stall California’s effort to make communities less risky places to live. Delays have not been unusual in the drinking water cleanups.

Three past examples of the delays for water cleanup: Seville and the Matheny Tract in Tulare County, and Kettleman City in Kings County. Matheny Tract’s problem has been solved, and Seville and Kettleman City appear to be within a few years of long-term solutions. But people still are living in these places with drinking water they cannot trust.

In Seville’s case, part of the years-long wait for a fix included a technicality in state rules, along with foot-dragging among bureaucrats. The town and six other area communities are working on a solution, but it takes time to sort through details and local politics.

For the Matheny Tract, 300 homes next to the city of Tulare, an effort to hook up to the water system in the nearby city was delayed when local officials balked at an agreement they had signed in 2011 to consolidate water systems. The officials were worried about the city’s water supplies as the drought intensified. With a lawsuit settlement moving forward and a state order for consolidation, the water began flowing last summer.

In Kings County, the Kettleman City fix for natural arsenic contamination was delayed because residents could not pay off a $500,000 debt on the water system. Chemical Waste, the owner of the nearby Kettleman Hills Hazardous Waste Landfill, covered the debt as part of its effort to expand its facility. The expansion was approved and the debt paid, but the fix still was going through the state environmental review early last year.

The 1,400 people who live in Kettleman City, midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, may have thought the problem was solved after the debt was paid, says resident Maricela Mares-Alatorre, who has been an activist for many years.

“I don’t think people realize what’s going on because the state hasn’t done a good enough job of communicating,” she says. “Bottom line is that we’re still waiting. It is frustrating.”

Finally last summer, the settlement of an administrative civil rights complaint over treatment of some Kettleman City residents has moved the process forward, promising better communication and more attention to improving public health. A water treatment plant is expected to be operational by the end of 2018.

Groundbreaking idea

Seville and the six other small communities in northern Tulare County could be the state’s first to build a regional treatment plant that would help them get away from nitrate-plagued groundwater.

A local irrigation district came up with a plan to get Kings River water, build a water treatment plant and treat the river water for consumption among the 5,000 or so residents living in Orosi, Cutler, East Orosi, Monson, Seville, Sultana and Yettem.

Six years ago, there was a big push for funding to study the treatment plant. It seemed to gain momentum after a highly publicized visit to the area from the United Nations in March 2011. Rebecca Quintana was among those who helped spur the visit.

The U.N. was touring places around the world – including Africa and parts of Asia – to highlight the need to provide healthy water as a basic human right. The U.N. urged California to act quickly in cleaning up the water.

But after moving the area’s funding request high on the priority list, the California Department of Public Health quietly dropped it to a lower priority. Officials explained the lead applicant, Orosi, had a water supply that was not currently out of compliance with standards.

 

Engineers argued it was only a matter of time before Orosi would be out of compliance again, but the decision was not reversed. It took months for the seven communities to get another lead applicant, and the funding process kicked into the next year. Delays continued throughout the following year.

Those involved say the delays happened despite the fact that the irrigation district, Alta Irrigation District in nearby Dinuba, already had figured a way to get the small amount of river water. The district had worked on the project for four years.

“In California, you always figure the tough part is getting the water,” Alta general manager Chris Kapheim says. “Not this time.”

In 2013, the state’s drinking water cleanup program got another wake-up call. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency publicly scolded California for not spending nearly $500 million of federal dollars for drinking water fixes.

With mounting pressure for change, the Drinking Water Program was shifted from the state health agency to the State Water Resources Control Board, which has streamlined the funding process. The program is swifter now, activists say.

One more important hoop

A decade ago, the town of Lanare in Fresno County got a small arsenic treatment system with about $1 million in federal funding. It operated only a matter of months before being shut down because residents could not afford to pay for the maintenance. It still is mothballed.

The lesson has not been lost in Tulare County. The seven towns last year were discussing how the water treatment plant would be owned and operated. They have settled many issues as they move toward establishing an agency to govern and operate a water treatment plant.

Every community has different issues, says Ryan Jensen, water solutions coordinator with the Community Water Center, a nonprofit group based in Visalia. The group is helping to form the entity to govern the project.

“It’s almost a $30 million project, and you’re talking about saddling seven communities with debt,” he says. “You need to be able to answer everyone’s questions and make sure everyone is represented.”

Monson, for instance, is completely on wells. The town does not have distribution pipes. The monthly bill is almost nonexistent. To make the system work, residents’ monthly bill would be nearly $76 a month for the treated water.

Seville residents pay about $60 a month for their water. Their cost would drop to $46.01 for water treatment.

Seville resident Argelia Flores, who is involved in the committee to discuss the treatment plant, says the committee is working toward making sure residents know the options.

She added that it’s difficult to pay for water that residents don’t trust. Sometimes, the water is contaminated. Sometimes it just stops flowing.

“There’s a temptation to stop paying the bill,” she says. “It is very discouraging to get all sudsed up in the shower, and then have no water to rinse.”

Seville got good news late last year. About $5 million in state funding will be used to rebuild its inadequate piping system. There also are hopes of drilling a new well for both Yettem and Seville so the communities can have healthy water as they wait for the new treatment plant.

Meanwhile, the communities continue to iron out legal details on the governing agency to run the water treatment plant, hoping to complete the work and get all the communities on board by late February or March. If all goes well, the plant could be operating by 2020, which is still three years away.

Rebecca Quintana, buoyed by the news of the state funding this year and a new pipe distribution system, says she soon will move back full time into her childhood Seville home.

“We’ve been working a long time for good water,” she says. “I think it’s finally happening.”

 

Water restrictions imposed at Pittsburgh VA hospital

originally posted on January 29, 2017

 

PITTSBURGH (AP) – Authorities say water restrictions have been implemented in many areas of a Veterans Affairs hospital in Pittsburgh due to discovery of the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease.

Veterans Affairs officials said routine testing at the hospital in the city’s Oakland section turned up the Legionella bacteria in many areas throughout the facility.

Spokesman Michael Marcus, however, said there have been no confirmed cases of hospital-acquired Legionnaires’ disease.

Dr. Brooke Decker, the hospital’s director of infection protection, said the restrictions include no use of the water supply for drinking, showering, bathing or washing hands. Portable hand-washing stations have been set up and bagged ice and bottled water are being provided.

Legionnaire’s disease killed at least six Pittsburgh VA patients and sickened 22 others in 2011 and 2012.

2b people drinking contaminated water: WHO

UNITED NATIONS – Against the backdrop of almost two billion people around the world relying on sources of drinking-water contaminated with faeces, the United Nations has called on countries to “radically” increase investments in water and sanitation infrastructure not only to protect their populations from deadly diseases but also to ensure that they are able to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
“Contaminated drinking-water is estimated to cause more than 500,000 diarrhoeal deaths each year and is a major factor in several neglected tropical diseases, including intestinal worms, schistosomiasis, and trachoma,” Maria Neira, the Director of Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health at the UN World Health Organization (WHO), said in a statement on Thursday.
The UN report, Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water 2017, notes that while countries have increased their budgets for water, sanitation and hygiene at an average annual rate of about 4.9 per cent over the last three years, 80 per cent of countries have reported that the increase is still insufficient to meet nationally-defined targets for those services.
Therefore, in order to meet the ambitious SDG targets, which aim for universal access to safely managed water and sanitation services by 2030, countries need to use financial resources more efficiently as well as increase efforts to identify new sources of funding.
The Global Assessment also highlights that these efforts are particularly important for developing countries where current national coverage targets are based on achieving access to basic infrastructure and which may not necessarily provide continuously safe and reliable services.
According to estimates by the World Bank, investments in infrastructure need to triple to $114 billion per year – a figure which does not include operating and maintenance costs.While this funding gap is vast, there are recent examples of countries having demonstrated the ability to mobilize the needed resources to meet development targets.
of halving the proportion of people without an improved source of water, and 95 among them met the corresponding target for sanitation.
“Increased investments in water and sanitation can yield substantial benefits for human health and development, generate employment and make sure that we leave no one behind,” he said.
This news was published in The Nation newspaper.
Read complete newspaper of 14-Apr-2017 here.

The US Is Suffering From a Very Real Water Crisis That Few Are Acknowledging

by Farron Cousins, originally posted on January 28, 2017

 

On January 16, 2016, President Obama declared a federal emergency for the city of Flint, Michigan, over the contamination of the city’s drinking water.

One year later, not only is the city still struggling to provide clean sources of water to the Michigan city’s population, but the plight of residents in Flint has opened up the conversation about a water crisis in the United States that very few people even knew existed.

The sad story of Flint, Michigan, gained national attention because it was a crisis that was entirely avoidable, at least for the time being. Republican Michigan Governor Rick Snyder was looking for ways to cut costs, so he hired an outside manager to come up with ideas on how to do that. Unfortunately, one of the ideas that was put into action was to change the source of Flint’s drinking water from the Detroit water system to the Flint River, which was known to be heavily polluted. When that contaminated water hit the city’s aging water delivery infrastructure, the chemicals interacted with the lead pipes, causing dangerous levels of lead contamination for residents who did not have water filters.

The problem with Flint, and the problem with many water delivery systems throughout the United States, is that lead pipes are time bombs.

Like most metals, lead will break down over time, especially when it is exposed to corrosive water throughout its existence. When you have close to 1.2 million miles of lead pipes for water delivery in America — pipes that only have a lifespan of about 75 years and many are reaching that age — you have a recipe for disaster that experts warn will cost close to $1 trillion to fix.

The only reason that the crisis in Flint, Michigan, was brought to the public’s attention was because of one woman, a pediatrician named Mona Hanna-Attisha, who began noticing the symptoms of lead poisoning in an extremely large number of children from Flint. Dr. Hanna-Attisha went public with this information, which prompted investigations from civil engineers, leading to the unveiling of the problem. At the time of Dr. Hanna-Attisha’s discovery, the contaminated water had been flowing through taps in Flint for two years.

Sadly, Flint is just a tiny piece in a much larger story. Likely the reason the crisis in Flint made national headlines is because of the level of political incompetence that went along with it. But the story did wake people up to the idea that dangerous water could be anywhere, and that led to investigations by reporters who uncovered one of the potentially most overlooked stories of 2016.

On December 19, 2016, Reuters released a startling report about America’s drinking water. Reuters’ investigation concluded that there were nearly 3,000 other locales in the United States where the lead contamination in drinking water was at least double the rates found in Flint’s drinking water. These were not areas where the contamination was the same, or even slightly elevated. No, these 3,000 areas have contamination levels that came in at least twice as high as Flint.

From the Reuters report:

The poisoned places on this map stretch from Warren, Pennsylvania, a town on the Allegheny River where 36 percent of children tested had high lead levels, to a zip code on Goat Island, Texas, where a quarter of tests showed poisoning. In some pockets of Baltimore, Cleveland and Philadelphia, where lead poisoning has spanned generations, the rate of elevated tests over the last decade was 40 to 50 percent.

Like Flint, many of these localities are plagued by legacy lead: crumbling paint, plumbing, or industrial waste left behind. Unlike Flint, many have received little attention or funding to combat poisoning.

To identify these locations, Reuters examined neighborhood-level blood testing results, most of which have not been previously disclosed. The data, obtained from state health departments and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tracks poisoning rates among children tested in each location.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, at least 2.5 percent of children in the United States have elevated levels of lead in their blood, a direct result of drinking contaminated water.

The World Health Organization, as reported by the Huffington Post, says that infants and small children may exhibit no signs of lead poisoning in their early years, but that the effects of lead on brain development become evident in adolescence. According to the Huffington Post:

Once kids reach school age, cognition problems, including lower IQ and ADHD-like symptoms start to show up. Lead exposure has been linked to physical problems, such as anemia, kidney dysfunction and high blood pressure, as well as behavioral problems, including aggressive behavior and problems with the criminal justice system.

We should also note that in these studies of contamination, researchers focused only on lead contamination. The levels of other toxins such as mercury, arsenic, and commercial and household chemical contamination could potentially make the water in these areas and others far more toxic than this set of data indicates.

Complicating matters further is the fact that testing children for lead contamination typically falls on states and municipalities, and that funding is drying up quickly. In short, states not only lack the funds to repair their aging water infrastructure, but they also lack the necessary funds to study the negative effects of that aging water delivery system on the public.

While the widespread contamination should raise alarm bells for every American, what might be even more terrifying is the fact that analysts are predicting that in a few decades, we’ll be lucky if we can even afford to drink contaminated water.

According to a new report from Michigan State University (MSU), a variety of compounding factors in the United States could easily push large portions of the population out of the financial range to even afford water in the future.

From the MSU report:

A variety of pressures ranging from climate change, to sanitation and water quality, to infrastructure upgrades, are placing increasing strain on water prices. Estimates of the cost to replace aging infrastructure in the United States alone project over $1 trillion dollars are needed in the next 25 years to replace systems built circa World War II, which could triple the cost of household water bills…

Over the next few decades, water prices are anticipated to increase to four times current levels. Prices could go higher if cities look to private providers for water services, who have a tendency to charge higher rates than public providers. These pressures on water systems, combined with the fact that water is a vital necessity to sustain life, place this issue at the forefront of 21st century infrastructure challenges. While studies have found that Americans are willing to pay more to maintain and ensure access to water resources, this willingness to pay may conflict with their fundamental ability to pay for water.

The report notes that water prices across the country have risen by about 41 percent since 2010, and if this particular trend continues, 35.6 percent of American households will not be able to afford water services within the next five years.

In short, the water affordability crisis is not something that is a few decades off, or even a single decade off: More than 40 million American citizens could find themselves unable to afford water in the next five years if both stagnating incomes and increasing water prices stay on their current trajectories.

These problems are very real, and they are problems that are generally not gaining very much attention. While the water contamination crisis will occasionally steal a headline or two, virtually no attention has been paid to the fact that we’re pricing a third of United States citizens out of the water market.

Resource scarcity breeds conflict. That’s been true throughout human history. And when we’re talking about something like water — the single most important thing to sustain life — the looming scarcity should be a top concern for every American citizen.

This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.

‘OUR CHRISTMAS DINNER’S RUINED Thousands of homes in London are without water on Christmas Day as panicked families rush to newsagents

A fault with Thames Water means some families can’t even flush their toilets

by Holly Christodoulou, originally posted on December 25, 2016

 

THOUSANDS of people have been left without water on Christmas Day.

Thames Water have launched a probe after families in south west London woke up to discover their taps weren’t working.

Some unlucky homeowners aren’t even able to flush their toilets, while others are wondering how they will cook Christmas dinner.

Homes in Twickenham, Hampton and Whitton have been affected and frantic families have rushed to their local shops to buy bottled water.

Clare Morrisroe, from Twickenham, told Sun Online: “We’ve had to fill pans of water and put them on the stove to cook, wash and make tea. It’s like being back in the 70s! And now we’re on our way out to help the homeless at Crisis at Christmas but can’t have a bath!”

One man who is affected told the Daily Star: “The water went off without warning at 10am this morning.

“It’s a bit of a nightmare as we have nothing coming out of the taps and we can’t even flush the toilet.

“We’ve tried ringing the water company but it’s constantly engaged so have no idea when it will come back on.

“All our neighbours and friends are also without water so could be a fun Christmas lunch.”

Thames Water said: “We are aware of the issue and we are very sorry to our customers affected on Christmas day.

“A team is on site and investigating. We hope to get the issue sorted as quickly as possible.”

Water interruptions in Davao on December 28

originally posted on December 27, 2016

 

THERE will be two water service interruptions in predominantly residential areas on December 28.

First set is low water pressure to no water on December 28 from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. which will be affecting some areas in Indangan, Cabantian, and Communal areas particularly in Nagkahiusa Village, San Isidro Indangan, Sto. Niño Village, Saint Ignatius, Nueva Esperanza Village, Indangan Relocation, Anita Homeowners Assn., Molave Homes, Adap Village, Millenium Village, Lemon Village, Madradeco Village, Villa Alevida, and Ramon Nena Village.

Also affected are areas included in the Schedule 2 of the rotational water schedule in Cabantian Water Supply System (WSS), specifically Ciudad de Esperanza, Aspen Heights, Blue Diamond Village, Catitipan Homeowners Assn., Deca Homes Subd., Emily Homes Subd., Chula Vista Subd., Emilia Homes Subd., Bacahoa Village, Dela Peña Village, Countryville Executive Homes, Cabantian Country Homes, Greenland Subd. Phases 1 and 2, Victors Executive Homes, Cecilia Heights Subd., Priscilla Estates, and Remedios Heights. To augment water supply, Davao City Water District (DCWD) will deliver water to these areas.

DCWD’s Indangan Production Well No. 1 and Cabantian Production Well No. 2 will be affected by Davao Light and Power Company’s power interruption on the same date as they will need to facilitate the upgrading of its primary lines along Cabantian Road, thus the water service interruption.

Areas under Schedule 1 of the rotational water supply in Cabantian WSS will still not have water as scheduled.

The Second set is from 9:00 p.m. of December 28, 2016 to 4:00 a.m. of December 29 which will affect areas served by DCWD from the junction of Malagamot–Davao-Agusan Road to Lasang including Luzville Subd., ILAIECO Compound, Brgy. Ilang, Upper Ilang, Amparo Village, Bugac Ilang, Brgy. Tibungco, Mangahan Village, Upper Mangahan, Cal Village, Vicente Gloria, Pena Village, Brgy. Bunawan, and Brgy. Lasang.

This water service interruption is needed for the tapping/looping of the newly installed 300mm diameter Cement Mortar Line Epoxy Coated Steel Pipe to the existing 400mm diameter Mortar Line Coated Steel Pipe at Davao-Agusan from Crossing Eliong to Buhisan. The improvement work is part of the Davao City Bulk Water Supply Project of DCWD which, upon completion, will improve water pressure and increase the availability of water supply in the city.

DCWD management asks for the understanding and cooperation of the customers who would be affected by the interruptions. They are also advised to store enough water prior to the scheduled water interruption.

Water supply may be restored earlier if work goes smoothly or later if unforeseen problems arise.

The public may visit DCWD website (www.davao-water.gov.ph) and its official Facebook page (www.facebook.com/davaowater) or call the Central Information Unit/Call Center through the 24-hour hotline 297-DCWD (3293) and press “1” on their phone dial for the latest daily water updates.

The public may also contact 0927-7988966, 0925-5113293 and 0908-4410653 for the schedule of water deliveries, other updates, complaints, queries, and matters pertaining to DCWD services. (PR)

3rd Waterless Day for Damascus Over Contamination

originally posted on December 27, 2016

 

Residents of the Syrian city of Damascus faced their third consecutive day without water on Sunday after the city’s supply was poisoned.

Authorities cut off the capital city’s pipeline following reports that militant groups had contaminated water supplies with diesel.

The al-Fija spring, which supplies fresh water to Damascus, lies next to the militant-controlled town of Ein al-Fijeh, in the mountainous Wadi Barada area, Deutsche Welle reported.

Daily news outlet Al-Watan, which is affiliated to the Syrian government, accused groups of “contaminating the water resources into Damascus with pollutants and diesel.”

The Damascus Water Supply and Sewage Authority said in a statement it had halted supplies following “terrorist attacks on all water resources feeding into Damascus and its surroundings.”

Financing Key to Reaching Everyone, Everywhere with Water & Sanitation

This week, we have alarming evidence that at least one of those goals – Sustainable Development Goal 6, to reach everyone everywhere with access to water and sanitation – is already in peril.
The UN Water Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water (GLAAS) report produced by the World Health Organisation (WHO) has revealed a huge gap in financing with over 80% of developing countries reporting that they have insufficient resources to meet their national targets.
Globally, the World Bank estimates that as much as £114 billion is required annually, around three times current levels – to meet the UN Global Goals’ ambitions to reach everyone, everywhere with safely-managed water and sanitation.
Soberingly, new aid commitments from donors for water and sanitation have fallen by 21% since 2012, from US$ 10.4 billion to US$ 8.2 billion in 2015.
Closing this financial gap will require increased levels of domestic and international finance for water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), from both public and private sources.
This is all the more important given the additional challenges faced by many developing countries from growing populations, rapid urbanisation, water scarcity and climate change.
Among other findings in this regular report card on water and sanitation financing: • Sub-Saharan Africa is home to half of the world’s people living without access to clean water, yet they received only US$1.7 billion, or 20% of all water and sanitation aid, in 2015.
However, aid commitments to these three regions were only 48% of global overseas development aid for water and sanitation in 2015.
Yet we see by the GLAAS report’s findings that the majority of developing countries do not have enough money to achieve their targets on water and sanitation access and that aid commitments are actually falling.
Progress is possible: in 2000, around 18% of the world’s population, or one billion people, had no access to even a basic, improved source of water.