Standing next to newly erected tents clustered on a hillside, Abdul Malek explains one of the biggest problems facing the more than 500,000 Rohingya Muslims who fled violence in Myanmar for the relative safety of Bangladesh.
In the past week, however, a new latrine was installed by the U.N. refugee agency.
To help combat a potential health emergency, aid groups are hurriedly installing thousands of tube wells for clean drinking water and as many latrines as they can.
Asif Saleh, a senior director with the Bangladeshi relief organization BRAC, said it was targeting installation of 15,000 latrines by Oct. 15.
And a lot of the diseases spread from open defecation and not having access to clean water.
Vivian Tan, a spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said in an email that to date the organization and its partners have installed 500 latrines serving some 25,000 people, mainly in the now-extended section of the Kutupalong camp.
An additional safeguard for controlling the spread of cholera is vaccination.
With support from the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund, Bangladesh’s Ministry of Health rolled out an ambitious oral cholera vaccination campaign on Tuesday at many of the settlement sites in the Cox’s Bazar sub-districts of Ukhia and Tekhnaf.
For Malek and his neighbors, the installation of the new latrine helped, but not everyone is using it.
When asked where men go, he gestured towards the hills and fields.

Budgam: The residents Ultigam and several far flung villages in Budgam are demanding clean drinking water supply and asking the government to install water aupply plants for their villages.
“We are forced to make do with unclean water,” says Abdul Rahman Bhat, resident of Utligam.
The unavailability of water plant in the area is forcing the people to get water from the bore wells or streams.
“Scarcity of clean potable water has resulted in several waterborne diseases,” she said.
“And eventually leads to the death of infected persons”.
“Villages should be provided with clean water to avoid the outbreak of diseases,” he said.
The pipelines are corroded or non-existent.
AEE Public Health Engineering Sub Division Beerwah Mushtaq Ahmad told Reader that the water supply scheme was old and unable to catering the whole area.
“We have another scheme in process namely Mulchella-Ranipora scheme.
He added that the department was short of 6 inch pipelines for which they have invited tenders.

U.S. Sens. The association, made up of nearly 1,300 residential lots, provides potable water and wastewater services to about 445 homes.
“Rural communities in Hawaii face unique challenges in maintaining and updating aging water infrastructure,” Hirono said.
A neighbor taking a morning walk saw smoke coming from the Kaulana Street house and called 911.
The first alarm was at 5:57 a.m.
No one was at home at the time of the fire.
Seventeen firefighters responded to the blaze.

U.S. Sens. Mazie K. Hirono and Brian Schatz, and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard announced that the Hawaiian Shores Community Association will receive nearly $3 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to improve its community drinking water system in Puna, Hawai‘i.
“Rural communities in Hawai‘i face unique challenges in maintaining and updating aging water infrastructure,” said Sen. Hirono.
“The Hawaiian Shores Community Association is very grateful to the USDA, Sens.
In addition, USDA will provide HSCA with $1,978,000 in federal assistance.

(MissionNewswire) As part of its Clean Water Initiative, Salesian Missions recently donated eight water reservoir tanks to the Don Bosco Araimiri Secondary School in Araimiri, Papua New Guinea. The new water tanks give students access to clean drinking water.
Currently, the school educates 250 students.
UN-Water estimates that worldwide there are more than 663 million people living without a safe water supply close to their home and must spend countless hours queuing or trekking to distant sources to look for water and cope with the health impacts of using contaminated water.
In response to this crisis, Salesian Missions, the U.S. development arm of the Salesians of Don Bosco, has made building wells and supplying fresh, clean water a top priority for every community in every country in which Salesian missionaries work.
“Having access to clean water and proper sanitation brings a sense of dignity to the children and families we serve in our programs,” says Father Mark Hyde, executive director of Salesian Missions.
Close to 50 percent of adults are illiterate and 25 percent of children are unable to attend school. In rural areas, where nearly 88 percent of the population resides, there are few roads or means of transportation to get to schools or places of employment.
Salesian missionaries in the country provide primary and secondary education as well as technical skills training to prepare youth for the workforce.

According the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), more than 180 million people are deprived of access to clean water in countries affected by conflict, violence, and instability.
Only 3 percent of the world’s water is freshwater. At the current rate of consumption, by 2025, majority of the world may face water shortages.
Demand-induced scarcity results from the water needs of increasing populations.
Terrorism: where water resources, or water systems, are either targets or tools of violence or coercion by non-state actors.
Humans need to drink water to survive. The majority of the human body (60 percent) is composed of water.
Yemen: It may become the first country in the world to run out of water. It is an impoverished desert country with years of conflict, instability and misgovernment.
If everyone has access to clean water, then there would not be any water conflict.

Five years later, the reality for hundreds of communities throughout the state is they have tap water that’s too contaminated to drink and no money to clean it up.
According to data from the state’s Water Resources Control Board, 700,000 Californians living in nearly 300 mostly rural and economically disadvantaged communities throughout the state have water that doesn’t meet safe drinking water standards.
Sen. Bill Monning (D-Carmel), along with an unusual coalition of environmentalists and farmers, says the solution to this problem is Senate Bill 623, which would establish a Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund subsidizing the operation and maintenance costs of cleanup efforts in small communities.
Most water customers would see a $1 dollar fee tacked onto their water bill each month.
But to the town’s residents, the small water treatment plant is a stinging reminder they’ve been left behind.
The plant, completed about a decade ago with $1.3 million of grant funding obtained by the community, was supposed to clean the town’s water, which has some of the highest levels of arsenic in the state.
“So many people have failed Lanare,” Garibay said.
“Even if the community wanted to, we can’t afford to treat the water,” said Isabel Solorio, a Lanare resident who helped create a community group to advocate on the town’s behalf.

The Environmental Protection Agency has hired contractors to repair fencing around a federally designated, hazardous waste site and “local security is stationed at the wells to prevent access,” the agency said, after reports surfaced that residents — desperate for drinking water — were taking water from a toxic well.
The utility was reportedly unaware that the site was contaminated until CNN contacted it with Superfund maps.
But almost a month after Hurricane Maria struck the island, more than 35 percent of the island’s residents still lack access to safe drinking water.
“It’s been nearly one month since Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, and yesterday, official numbers on drinking water access inexplicably declined from 72 percent to 65 percent,” Food & Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter said in a statement Wednesday.
Removal sites require immediate, short-term responses to protect people from immediate threats posed by hazardous waste sites but have not been designed as Superfund sites. The EPA said late Tuesday it has successfully assessed a total of 28 Superfund sites or removal sites in Puerto Rico.
A month after Maria, 82% of Americans in Puerto Rico have no power, 35% no water.
In a tweet on Wednesday, Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) noted, “a month after Maria, 82 percent of Americans in Puerto Rico have no power, 35 percent no water.

More than $200 million from a settlement with Exxon-Mobil over MTBE contamination has been set aside for funding these projects.
Robert Scott is the commissioner of the Department of Environmental Services. Morning Edition Host Rick Ganley spoke with him about issues with drinking water in the state.
Ultimately through the court and all the process in the court, the state was awarded what amounts to today, with interest, over $278 million, and that is the funding for the trust fund that you mentioned.
There’s 21 drinking water infrastructure projects.
You know there’s PFOA, and of course MTBE contamination in particular.
But we have a lot of MTBE, especially contamination Atkinson. And that would really involve getting infrastructure so we can get people with contaminated water on their private wells on the public drinking water systems ideally.
I can’t drink this water.
There’s a potential for those who need it, and maybe getting public water, meaning a pipe coming to your house, maybe is not practical.

High lead levels were found in the drinking water of 24 York Region schools in 2016.
While Sutton District High School didn’t test as high as the Richmond Hill school, it failed 17 of its 20 tests with results ranging from 46 PPB to 10 PPB from July to September in 2016.
“We take action to remediate the problem immediately when exceedances occur,” YRDSB environmental safety officer Kori Zsigmond said.
If there is any question about water quality, the taps are bagged and sealed to prevent use, bottled water is provided and parents will be notified.
According to Health Canada, the toxicity of lead has been extensively documented in humans, based on blood lead levels. The strongest effect of exposure documented is in children and reductions in intelligence quotient (IQ) scores.
While 10 PPB or under is considered acceptable lead levels in drinking water across the province, organizations like the World Health Organization warns that any lead exposure is too much.
Standing and flushed water are tested.