As the ‘Beast from the East’ prepares to clash with Storm Emma later this afternoon, farmers and rural dwellers have been warned to remain indoors from 4:00pm today and to exercise extreme caution.
The most vulnerable groups of animals to a water shortage are dairy cows, animals on high-concentrate diets and animals fed hay, straw or other very dry feeds.
Dairy cows must have access to drinking water at all times.
According to Teagasc, if an animal is without water for a prolonged period of time, there is a chance they could gorge themselves when it is made available again.
Therefore, protecting pumps and supply pipes is important.
However, pumps can sometimes trip out.
Pipes from the pump to the sheds and troughs need to be kept thawed.
Farmers could fit a tap at the end of the pipe serving the shed.
According to Teagasc’s Tom Ryan, the amount of water the animals are using and the heat from the animals should be enough to stop pipes freezing.
He also outlined that supply pipes to the sheds that are above ground will cause endless problems.

TNM Plc, through its mobile money business, Mpamba Trust has drilled three boreholes worth K9 million in Ntunthama schools in Kasungu.
Through the Mpamba Board Trust the company has also made an investment of K9 million for the purchase of 200 desks at Chipoka Secondary School in Salima.
TNM’s Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, said at the handover of the boreholes in Kasungu and desks in Salima that the contribution is a fulfilment of TNM Mpamba’s pledge to give back to community proceeds from the mobile money business.
He said funds for the donation have been sourced from interest accrued through the Mpamba business.
At TNM, we keep our word, and through Mpamba our commitment to partner people and communities across Malawi is real,” he said.
The TNM Chief Sales and Marketing Officer said TNM appreciates the challenges that people of Ntunthama have been experiencing in as far as access to portable water is concerned.
This situation does not bode well for people living in Ntunthama hence this intervention from TNM Mpamba,” he said.
Makata said the Mpamba Trust Fund in 2017 set aside over K270 million for community and people-centred intervention projects in health and education that the boreholes are just a continuation.
“Everytime the well had water, it was the community first and the students second, which most of the times left them with water.
For girls it was a worse situation because most of them had to abscond classes on sanitary issues “With this borehole in place, class’s attendance by the students will improve which in turn will lead to better performances during national examinations.

The Enquirer/Kareem Elgazzar At this point, unless you live under a rock, you’ve seen pictures of the swollen, chocolate milk-colored Ohio River.
"What people sometimes don’t understand is just how blessed we are in terms of natural water resources," said Mike Ekberg, manager for water resource monitoring and analysis at the Miami Conservancy District.
Our water situation is a positive one, actually, because of natural and man-made water systems in Southwest Ohio.
We have the Ohio River, which provides 88 percent of Cincinnati’s drinking water and much of the water for Northern Kentucky and other communities along the river.
The aquifer is the source of clean water for 2.7 million people in communities including Fairfield, Hamilton, Middletown, Dayton, Springfield and Oxford.
"As one of my old colleagues would say, ‘It’s a gift from the glacier,’ " said Nash, who oversees an aquifer monitoring station in Hamilton County.
At Greater Cincinnati Water Works, most of the water comes from the Ohio River.
Water Works tests the water 600 times per day to make sure of the quality.
Seven of those wells are closed because of the flooding, said Jeff Swertfeger, water quality and treatment superintendent for Greater Cincinnati Water Works.
Officials remind owners of private wells to make sure they are operating properly, that "water from the well is coming from the aquifer, through screens, not coming from above," said Ekberg.

Experts root for market-driven solution to Africa’s water, sanitation crisis NAIROBI, Feb. 27 (Xinhua) — African countries should harness market-based initiatives supported by the local private sector to bridge a yawning water and sanitation access gap in the continent, experts said at a forum in Nairobi on Tuesday.
According to the experts attending the two-day Aid and International Development Forum Africa Summit, harnessing capital, skills and technologies from industry could offer durable solution to water and sanitation crisis in the world’s second largest content.
Tobias Omufwoko, the Country Director of the Wash Alliance Kenya said a market driven approach should be adopted to boost access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation in Africa.
"Countries in Africa should rethink their models of tackling water and sanitation challenges.
The business sector could present more innovative and long-lasting solutions if it is given the right incentives," Omufwoko said.
Delegates attending the Pan African Aid Summit in Nairobi who included policymakers, industry executives and scholars agreed that the continent’s prosperity hinges on universal access to clean water and sanitation.
Omufwoko noted that private sector investments in water and sewerage infrastructure have improved access to these critical services in Africa’s urban centers.
"The private sector has also been supplying innovations like solar based water treatment gadgets to communities in remote areas," said Omufwoko.
"Small and medium sized businesses have also supplied affordable water harvesting technologies in rural Africa," he added.
"The market based mechanisms to address water and sanitation access gap can work in Africa in the light of higher investor confidence, reforms and political stability in most parts of the continent," Llario said.

Over K35 million (US$26,157) will be spent to ensure potable water supply for 72 villages in 13 townships in Mandalay Region during the coming summer months, the chief of the regional Rural Development Department said.
“We have collected data on villages that face water shortages this summer,” U Min Han, the department’s director, said on Monday.
For transporting water, we will use fuel allocated for each township,” he added.
The department plans to start supplying water in these areas in March, said U Min Han.
He added that the costs are being calculated based on water tank truck rental and fuel usage.
Mandalay is in the dry zone of central Myanmar and faces water crises every April, May and June.
“It is hard to get access to underground water, so even though we drill to 500ft deep, the water doesn’t taste good for drinking,” said regional parliament member U Wanna Aung.
Helping rural areas get access to water is one of the first priorities of the regional government’s development projects,” he added.
With the help of social welfare organisations, drinking water would be transported to the villages.
In 2017, the Rural Development Department provided drinking water for 98 villages in 15 townships that faced water shortages during the summer months.

WWF-Pakistan organised this workshop under the project “International Labour and Environmental Standards (ILES), Application in Pakistan’s Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)” which was attended by a large number of stakeholders from public and private sectors.
While addressing the different sessions of the workshop, the speakers highlighted the grave issue of water scarcity which the people of Pakistan might face in the near future in case of authorities’ reluctance in resolving the issue.
They said, “Pakistan is a water-stressed country and is nearing the threshold of water scarcity.
Access to safe drinking water in rural and urban areas is declining and provision of potable water is a key issue that people face”.
Punjab Irrigation Department’s Irrigation Research Institute Director Ghulam Zakir Hassan Sial said that safe drinking water was not available to the city of Lahore while groundwater was depleting at a rate of 2.5 feet/year.
“If this rate of depletion continues, a time will come when there will be no safe water available for future generations of Lahore,” he said.
Ministry of Climate Change Representative Shafqat Abbas was of the view that the textile and leather sectors represent the largest domain of the industrial base and played a key role in the country’s economy and were also key contributors of carbon emissions in the country.
Briefing about the project, Project Manager Sohail Naqvi said that the six-year ILES project was funded by European Union (EU) and was being jointly implemented by WWF-Pakistan with the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Lahore, Karachi, Sialkot and Faisalabad.
He said that the project aimed to implement international labour and environmental standards in Pakistan in order to improve the capacity of the public sector to implement MEAs and national environmental laws and standards in Pakistan.
Government departments, including Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (PCSIR), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), University of Engineering and Technology (UET), National Engineering Services Pakistan (NESPAK), Punjab Saaf Pani Company (PSPC), Al Jazari Academy, Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA), Ozkartallar Campak Joint Venture (OZPAK), Punjab Public Health Authority, Lahore Waste Management Company (LWMC), Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR), The Urban Unit, Ministry of Climate Change, Industry Commerce and Investment Department, Infrastructure Development Authority Punjab, and many others participated in the two-day event.

Political parties in Pakistan will include issues of provision of drinking water and better sanitation in the manifestos for General Elections 2018 Pakistan: Islamabad: Major parliamentary political parties have affirmed their commitment towards featuring provision of clean drinking water, safe sanitation and hygiene awareness in their manifestos being prepared for Pakistan General Elections 2018 to improve the lives and health of the citizenry.
The political parties were of the view that giving top priority to drinking water and sanitation in their respective manifestos would not only improve the quality of Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) services but also support improvements in the health and education sectors of the country’s development agenda.
Among the political parties Senator Taj Haider of Pakistan People Party said that availability of clean drinking and public access for it serious issues in Pakistan.
His government in Sindh has focused its lenses to resolve sanitation issues and to ensure clean drinking water for common man.
All political parties must go one step ahead to implement and to improve the quality of Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) services it with full political will.
MQM MNA Kishwar Zehra said that 90% population of Karachi does not have access to clean drinking water.
The speakers agreed that Pakistan was one of the most densely populated countries in South Asia and lacked behind in the provision and access to quality water, sanitation and hygiene both in rural and urban areas.
Pakistan was among those countries who achieved its Millennium Development Goal (MDG) for sanitation with 64 percent of the population using improved sanitation facilities.
Between 2000 and 2017, the number of people practicing open defecation reduced from 39 percent to 11 percent, access to improved sanitation increased from 35 percent to 73 percent.
The participants actively interacted with the speakers, exchanged views, and expressed that during General Election 2013 there were limited commitments from most of the political party within party manifestos and stressed that with growing population and widespread poverty the provision of safe drinking water, decent sanitation and hygiene awareness must be the top priority of the entire political leadership.

Cafes, sandwich shops and fast-food outlets should be forced to offer free drinking water on request to help reduce the number of plastic bottles, the head of an influential Commons committee has suggested.
Mary Creagh, the leader of the Environment Audit select committee, accused the Government of "dragging its" feet on the plastic bottle crisis and said it should be a legal requirement for all food and drink retailers to provide tapwater.
Ms Creagh said: “The Government should go further and make it a legal requirement for all premises that serve food or drink to provide drinking water on request.
“The UK has safe, clean tap water and failing to provide it leads to unnecessary use of plastic water bottles which clog up our river and seas.” A recent House of Commons report found that the UK drinks its way through 38.5 million plastic bottles every day, around 700,000 of which end up littering the streets.
Plastic bottles are believed to take roughly 450 years to degrade.
Current legislation only requires licensed premises, such as bars and restaurants, to provide tap water on request.
They are also allowed to charge customers for the use of a glass and service.
The Government yesterday acknowledged “a culture shift” was required to ensure the public feel comfortable asking for tap water but made no commitment to legislate on free access.
Plastic bottles and nappies take 450 years to biodegrade Estimated time taken to biodegrade (years)
In January the Government launch a 25-year environment plan with targets to reduce plastic waste.

Shutterstock How does a city run out of water?
What we do know, however, is that Cape Town is not alone, with a recent report exposing 11 other cities at risk.
On the surface, the underlying story is about a failure in how the public sector manages water.
In other words, water is too often treated as a taken-for-granted asset, rather than a strategic resource for economic development, social well-being and ecosystem health.
In thinking through the Cape Town crisis, therefore, it is unfair to place all the blame onto the public sector.
If these fundamental drivers of water scarcity are not addressed, with costs shared proportionately, we hinder the public sector’s ability to ensure water resiliency and security.
The key is whether we will act now and plan for the future.
In particular, the private sector has an essential role to play in devising technology and infrastructure solutions.
Innovation: We need a broader view of innovation beyond technology to include business models, financing/funding, public policy and partnerships.
We have a shared responsibility to manage our scarce fresh water supplies.

At the same time, they were able to access ablution blocks.
“We have boreholes but the water is not as clean as the one provided by World Vision,” she said.
The project by World Vision will improve access to safe and sustainable water, sanitation and hygiene for over 1,160,000 people in areas where the organisation operates.
In providing communities with facilities for water, World Vision believes that no child should stop school and jeopardise their future because of lack of access to water, sanitation and hygiene facilities in schools.
World Vision national director Mark Kelly wants communities to have easy access to water and sanitation facilities so that they live happier lives.
Apparently, Government and World Vision have similar goals to ensure that people are provided with clean and safe drinking water and proper sanitation.
Government prioritises the provision of clean and safe drinking water as an overall goal of poverty alleviation and promotion of sustainable economic development.
In Government’s Vision 2030 and Seventh National Development Plan (7NDP), provision of clean water and improved sanitation is a priority.
“Having access to piped water and a modern ablution block at a school will enhance children’s attendance in school and results in high concentration and improved performance in class.
It is also true that levels of pupils dropping out of school is high, especially among girls,” he said.