Pramod Madhwaraj, Minister of State for Fisheries, Youth Services and Sports, has directed officers of Udupi City Municipal Council (CMC) and Panchayat Development Officers (PDOs) to give priority to supplying water by tankers to water scarce areas in Udupi city and all gram panchayats in Udupi Assembly constituency respectively.
Mr. Madhwaraj said the PDOs should clear the bills of contractors supplying water through water tankers within a week.
Though the rains were lesser this time, the complaints about water scarcity were lower compared to last year, he said.
K. Raghavendra, CMC environment engineer, said water was being supplied in the city through around 50 tankers daily.
He said there were 911 poor people living in rented houses in the Udupi Assembly constituency.
Of these, 595 were from Udupi city.
They would be provided with sites soon so that they can build houses.
These sites would be provided in the city and in surrounding villages.
2.7 lakh each to construct their houses, while those belonging to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes would get Rs.
Already 50 acres of land had been identified in rural areas, while 14 acres of land had been identified in the city to be given as sites to the poor.

Solar-Powered Device That Sucks Moisture From Air Can Save Millions From Water-Related Diseases.
Foreground — White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan — Opaque Semi-Opaque Background — White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan — Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window — White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan — Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Default Monospace Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Sans-Serif Casual Script Small Caps Defaults Done Play Video Play Mute Current Time 0:00 / Duration Time 0:00 Loaded: 0% Progress: 0% Stream TypeLIVE Remaining Time -0:00 Playback Rate 1 Chapters Chapters Subtitles subtitles off Captions captions settings captions off Fullscreen This is a modal window.
Foreground — White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan — Opaque Semi-Opaque Background — White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan — Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window — White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan — Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Default Monospace Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Sans-Serif Casual Script Small Caps Defaults Done A sponge-like device that uses the power of sunlight to harvest water vapor from air even in areas with low humidity such as deserts could be an answer to the world’s water scarcity problem.
Water Scarcity And Water-Related Diseases Figures from the World Health Organization show that at least 1.8 billion people worldwide drink water that are contaminated with feces.
WHO estimates that diarrhea alone that is caused by viral, parasitic, and bacterial organisms from contaminated water supplies kills 842,000 and sickens about 4 billion people per year.
Schistosomiasis, which is caused by parasitic worms that are contracted through exposure to infested water, also affects 240 million people.
The drought results in proliferation of water-related diseases, as people have to rely on contaminated and stagnant water sources.
New Device May Make Water More Accessible To Dry And Drought-Stricken Areas The new device developed by MIT researchers offers hope in that it is capable of wringing water from air even in areas with low humidity.
Researchers said that the device can produce liters of water in areas where humidity is as low as 20 percent, which is about the same as the humidity in most deserts.
The device may one day become a household fixture in poorer parts of the world where water is scarce, allowing people to produce their own drinking water rather than walking far distances to fetch water or rely on available but contaminated water sources.

Solar power devices are now capable to extract water out of air.
These devices work on a novel kind of material which could extract a large volume of water into its various number of pores.
A report during the last year in Science Advances had found that nearly four billion residents, almost half in India as well as in China, face “severe water scarcity at least during one month of the year.” This means that water shortages have affected about two-thirds of the world’s growing population.
These shortages—and conflicts are only expected to get more popular in large parts of the globe as the climatic changes accelerate.
A team at MIT has developed the technology working in Omar Yaghi’s laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley.
These devices have components which promise a class of synthetic porous materials also known as metal-organic frameworks and are composed of organic molecules attached along with the metal atoms, which Yaghi developed.
The material consists of a massive area of the surface, in order of a football field per gram, allowing it to connect with large quantities of particles.
I call it personalised water,” he said.
The new system is composed of dust-sized MOF particles which are compressed between a solar absorber and a condenser plate, which is placed inside a chamber which is left open to the air.
The older water-harvesting technologies have been made limited to the areas having fog or other high-moisture conditions.

Ads by Kiosked Anantapur: With the month of April experiencing high temperature, livestock-cows, buffaloes, sheep and goats- are questing for drinking water to just wet their throats.
Highlights: New scheme of constructing water tubs for the cattle launched on April 3 in Anantapur district The scheme is jointly executed by DWMA and Animal Husbandry department To offset drinking water shortage, District Collector Kona Sasidhar devised a new scheme to cater to water requirements of 48 lakh sheep and cattle in the district.
The purpose of the scheme is to provide drinking water tubs for the cattle in all villages in the district.
The scheme was launched by the Collector on April 3, 2017 to supply water to livestock especially during the on-going summer months.
These are community water tubs and all the cattle can quench its thirst from the tubs.
The construction of each tub costs Rs 25,000 with 17 per cent of it as wage component and 83 percent for materials.
In case of water scarcity, tankers will supply water to the water tubs and ensure availability of water for livestock throughout the day.
All the water tubs’ construction has been completed and proving to be a great boon to the cattle even as mercury levels are rising.
To effectively tackle thirst of livestock, the scheme is being executed on a war footing to prevent animal deaths and distress sales.
By Ravi P Benjamin

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.

Environmentalists and others who have studied the effects of pollutants in water and their ecosystems know it can have drastic effects on both.
These technologies include everything from filtering water to produce clean drinking water to installing water trash cans to dispose of the garbage on sea coasts and in other bodies of water.
Two Australian surfers, Andrew Turton and Pete Ceglinski, decided to address the situation by inventing a bin similar to an automated pool cleaner.
This device was made to withstand cleaning marinas, harbors, ports and inland waters such as rivers and lakes.
People are addressing disease-causing agents in water as well.
Because of this, innovations to provide clean drinking water are growing.
This is made by Vestergaard, an international company that makes other water filtration products such as filter bottles.
Students at Carnegie Mellon University have also taken an interest in the situation.
This “LUV Water” uses the water’s weight to rotate a motor that powers UV-LED lights that kill waterborne pathogens.
With water pollution a growing problem, one of the most effective solutions would be to cut the source of the pollutants.

Scientists Turn Air Into Drinking Water With Device Powered Solely by Sunlight.
Scientists have created a device that can pull drinking water from the air using only the power of sunlight.
That could change the lives of the 4 billion people around the globe who lack access to safe drinking warer for at least one month per year.
The technology is based on a material called a metal-organic framework (MOF), first developed by Yaghi more than 20 years ago.
Recently, he and Wang, a mechanical engineer, teamed up to develop an MOF device that could collect water.
This was in conditions with just 20 to 30 percent humidity.
Wang tells Newsweek that at the moment, the device is not viable as a commercial product.
We can then think about clever designs of how to stack these layers into the system by which you can enhance the transportation of the vapor molecules and the production of the water.” The plan is to create a 30-liter system, about the size of a carry-on suitcase, which would be able to provide drinking water for a family of four each day.
Certainly, there are many techniques for capturing water at high humidity but all those don’t work at low humidity as this MOF device does.
“This is the first material and device capable of water capture and delivery under such conditions, making it potentially possible to water those areas where water is scarce.

And while a lot of research has focussed on desalination, a team of scientists have now come up with another possible solution – a device that pulls fresh water out of thin air, even in places with humidity as low as 20 percent.
Called the ‘solar-powered harvester’, the device was created by teams from MIT and the University of California, Berkeley, using a special type of material known as a metal-organic framework (MOF).
So far the prototype device has been tested under conditions of 20 to 30 percent humidity, and was able to pull 2.8 litres (3 quarts) of water from the air over a 12- hour period, using 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of MOF.
"One vision for the future is to have water off-grid, where you have a device at home running on ambient solar for delivering water that satisfies the needs of a household," said Yaghi.
Unlike regular sheets of metals, MOFs are structures where metals such as magnesium or aluminium are combined with organic molecules in an arrangement that creates rigid, porous structures ideal for storing gases or liquids.
The MIT team then took dust-sized crystals of this MOF and compressed them between a solar absorber and a condenser plate, and placed the whole thing inside a chamber that was exposed to the outside air.
Sunlight then heats the MOF up and pushes the bound water towards the condenser, which is the same temperature as the outside air.
This vapour condenses as liquid water, and drips into a collector to provide clean drinking water.
"This work offers a new way to harvest water from air that does not require high relative humidity conditions and is much more energy efficient than other existing technologies," said MIT team leader, Evelyn Wang.
"To have water running all the time, you could design a system that absorbs the humidity during the night and evolves it during the day," he added.

They hope that a version of the technology could eventually supply clean drinking water in some the driest and poorest parts of the globe.
The device is based on a novel material that can pull large amounts of water into its many pores.
A report last year in Science Advances found that four billion people, nearly half in India and China, face “severe water scarcity at least one month of the year.” That means water shortages affect two-thirds of the world’s population.
The size and chemical character of the material’s pores can be customized to capture particular types of molecules or allow them to flow through.
The material also has a massive surface area, on the order of a football field per gram, enabling it to bond with a large quantity of particles.
In this case, the scientists employed a previously developed version of the material that Yaghi optimized to efficiently capture water molecules.
But during the day, sunlight hitting the material adds enough energy to convert the water molecules into vapor.
Though they plan to continue refining the technology, they’re “not that far away” from a viable product, says Evelyn Wang, head of MIT’s device research laboratory.
Could this technology make a real difference in some of the driest parts of the world?
But the big hope, he says, is that these devices could become household fixtures in poorer parts of the world.

How a Judge Scrapped Pennsylvania Families’ $4.24M Water Pollution Verdict in Gas Drilling Lawsuit.
In a 58 page ruling, Magistrate Judge Martin C. Carlson discarded the jury’s verdict in Ely v. Cabot and ordered a new trial, extending the legal battle over one of the highest-profile and longest-running fracking-related water contamination cases in the country.
Nonetheless, Judge Carlson declined to throw out the lawsuit entirely, ordering Cabot to re-start settlement talks with the Ely and Hubert families.
John-Mark Stensvaag, an environmental law professor at the University of Iowa, said that orders to re-try cases “are not as rare as one might think.” “This does not mean that the plaintiffs have no case,” he added, “it only means that, in [Judge Carlson’s] opinion, they have not presented a case justifying the jury’s verdict and should be given a second opportunity to present an adequate case.” The Ely family leaves the federal courthouse on the first day of trial in 2016. Credit: Laura Evangelisto © 2016 Carter Road Water Contamination There’s little question that something is very wrong with the water on Carter Road, despite lingering questions in the legal battles centering around that contaminated water.
In 2010, the state’s Department of Environmental Protection concluded that Cabot’s drilling operations had contaminated the drinking water supplies of 19 homes in Dimock and reached an agreement with Cabot requiring the company to pay out $4.6 million over the harm to the families’ wells.
That presentation was barred from being entered into evidence by Judge Carlson, despite the plaintiffs’ request to present it to the jury.
Evidence Catch-22 An underlying theme of the case for the plaintiffs’ attorney Lewis and her clients has centered around a struggle over the evidence the plaintiffs could present to the jury, which has come back to haunt them with the recent ruling by Judge Carlson.
Part of the problem is that many of the wells near Carter Road have virtually identical names and it’s not clear that the plaintiffs intended their stipulation to cover all of the “Gesford” wells.
State and federal records also show that Cabot was cited for violating state environmental laws at the Gesford 3 well on June 3, 2008 — a time when Judge Carlson’s order insists that Gesford 3 had not yet been drilled.
Ely, the lead plaintiff at the trial, also said he was harassed by McAleer in a sworn testimony exhibited as part of the same June 2016 court filing submitted to the court by Lewis and Radow.