Staff Reporter

Colorado’s federal COVID aid was lifeline to hospitals, health care industry

April 15, 2022 by Staff Reporter

There is no masking when it comes to dental work. Mouths agape, every patient is a potential coronavirus spreader who can grind a dentist’s office to a halt in a matter of days.

It happened to Blanchard & Richardson Family Dentistry, where just a single hygienist forced to quarantine with a COVID-19 infection meant up to 50 appointments — and thousands of dollars in revenue — wiped from the books in one week.

The Littleton dental practice received nearly $109,000 from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s COVID-19 Provider Relief Fund to help it muddle through the pandemic — a tiny fraction of the nearly $1.7 billion hospitals and medical clinics across Colorado have received from the fund over the past 25 months.

The money went to cover the costs of staff salaries, personal protection equipment or to help clinics and doctor’s offices stand up telemedicine systems on the fly.

Arapahoe County received the largest slice out of Colorado’s 64 counties — $345 million as of mid-January — money that went out to nearly 1,000 medical providers, ranging from giant hospital companies to cancer clinics to ambulance services to dental and chiropractic offices.

According to data analysis from The Denver Post, hospital systems such as Centennial-based Centura Health came out on top, receiving nearly $200 million in provider relief funds to distribute to its 17 hospitals in Colorado and Kansas.

By contrast, tiny Evans Chiropractic in Littleton got just $2.

“The relief funds helped them to keep their offices open,” said Colorado Medical Society President Mark Johnson. “There would have been an even greater shortage of physicians without these funds.”

Johnson, who led Jefferson County Public Health for more than three decades, said doctors who weren’t part of a hospital or large health care outfit were hardest hit by the pandemic, losing one-half to two-thirds of their outpatient business as lockdowns and fear overtook Colorado.

“One of the biggest issues was that people were afraid to go anywhere,” he said.

Johnson said the $186.5 billion HHS has distributed nationwide as part of the provider fund over the last two years has been critical to keeping an overburdened health care system from collapsing under the weight of a relentless global pandemic that has claimed more than 13,000 lives in Colorado, more than 1 million nationwide and more than 6 million lives across the world.

“We came close in a number of states to breaking the system, and it would have broken if it hadn’t been for the provider relief funds,” Johnson said.

The Denver Post profiled a number of medical providers, from the big to the small, to find out how they used funds from the Provider Relief Fund. Here are their stories.

Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post

Medical Laboratory Scientist Heather Salazar collects a blood sample from Trina Elliott at Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers in Aurora on Thursday, March 17, 2022.

The cancer clinic ($9.6 million)

The email came in on April 10, 2020 — Good Friday — informing Glenn Balasky, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers, that his 13 clinics up and down the Front Range would be getting money from the provider relief fund.

It had been exactly one month since Gov. Jared Polis had declared a public health emergency and already the effects of the pandemic were hitting the state’s medical community hard. For the first six months of the pandemic, Balasky said Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers lost revenue from canceled appointments, as patients stayed home to avoid potential exposure to the coronavirus.

The Greenwood Village-based oncology operation — with 700 employees supporting 58 doctors and 40,000 patients annually getting treatment for cancer or blood diseases — received $9.6 million from the provider relief fund.

“The funds were critical not only at the time but over the course of the pandemic,” Balasky said. “It was a feeling of a safety net — the government recognizing it doesn’t know what’s going to happen. But as the big brother in our arena, they were the only ones that could help out immediately.”

The money, as with many medical providers, went to cover the cost of personal protective equipment, which had shot up in price because of shortages and fierce competition. It also went to help keep paychecks whole for existing staff and to pay screeners who were now required to vet people coming into the clinics.

But one of the big unanticipated costs put upon Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers by the pandemic was establishing the means and infrastructure to treat people from afar. It’s something the organization hadn’t done much with before COVID-19 hit Colorado, Balasky said.

“Telemedicine was suddenly upon us,” he said. “We had to add computers, software programs, microphones and pay for software licenses to do telemedicine with patients.”

But cancer being what it is, Balasky said, his organization could only engage in remote visits to a certain degree. In the end, the company kept its clinics open throughout the entire health crisis.

“Even if we wanted to close our doors, you can’t treat cancer at home,” he said. “Cancer did not take a break for COVID.”

Kathryn Scott, Special to The Denver Post

Craig Hospital in Englewood is pictured on April 28, 2020.

The hospital ($3.4 million)

As a potential ground zero location for COVID-19 transmission, Craig Hospital in Englewood had to essentially shutter its outpatient business during the first few months of the pandemic — at a cost of $6 million.

“Until we knew what we were dealing with, we were trying to be very cautious about who we were letting into the building,” said Dan Frank, Craig’s chief financial officer. “We were shut down to about 5% of our total outpatient volume for several months.”

The $3.4 million Craig received in federal provider relief funds was critical in avoiding layoffs at the rehabilitation facility that specializes in spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries, Frank said. The hospital employs around 1,000 people and sees 1,800 patients annually.

“That $3.4 million helped us maintain full employment,” he said.

And the rigorous measures Craig took to ward off the coronavirus allowed Craig to go without any COVID-19 cases until the ultra-contagious omicron surge arrived in December. But keeping the facility virus-free for the first 21 months of the pandemic didn’t come without a price tag.

Aside from the virtual closure of its outpatient business, Craig incurred additional expenses it wasn’t anticipating in its efforts to manage the explosion of coronavirus in its midst.

The hospital had to establish negative airflow rooms to minimize virus transmission in sensitive settings, hire additional staff to screen visitors entering the building and make a costly foray into telemedicine as more medical appointments went virtual.

“We created a telemedicine program from scratch in the early days of COVID,” Frank said.

Click to enlarge

Not being a part of a large corporate hospital system, Craig wasn’t in line for as much federal COVID relief money and didn’t have the economies of scale to help defray some of its costs. By contrast, Centennial-based Centura Health received $187 million in provider relief funds, which represents the lion’s share of Arapahoe County’s take in that category.

Because Centura Health owns 17 hospitals in Colorado and western Kansas, including Longmont United and OrthoColorado in Lakewood, much of that money did not stay in Arapahoe County. But the funds were critical in facing “historic and unprecedented challenges” across its entire system, said Centura spokesman Kevin Massey.

“These relief funds were used to fund new expenses Centura Health incurred for supplies and pharmaceuticals, including personal protective equipment for our caregivers, COVID-19 testing and vaccinations, equipment and facilities to handle COVID-19 patients and surges, enhanced telehealth access, and additional labor expenses throughout the pandemic,” he said.

Centura, Massey said, also gave “appreciation pay” to its employees, along with child care, grocery shopping support and free meals to keep up morale among workers in an industry that got walloped by the pandemic.

Despite the millions of dollars in federal assistance, the revenue “did not fully cover all of Centura’s additional pandemic expenses, let alone the significant lost revenue experienced during shutdowns and multiple surges,” Massey said.

Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post

Misko Pazsgai, left, and Brian Steen, right, of South Metro Fire Rescue take care of a fallen and injured senior in Centennial on Thursday, March 24, 2022.

The ambulance driver ($467,000)

The budgetary wallop for Centennial-based South Metro Fire Rescue from the coronavirus pandemic was big: more than a million dollars lost in 2020 compared to 2019, as COVID-19 made people hesitant to summon help for medical emergencies.

Transports by ambulance fell by 800 in 2020 from the prior year despite a growing population across South Metro’s 300-square-mile service area, which is largely centered on Arapahoe County. At $1,270 a ride, and another $15 per mile, the losses added up, said Eric Hurst, a spokesman for South Metro.

“We saw a decrease in people calling 911 but people were sicker when they did call,” Hurst said. “Regardless of what’s going on in the world around us, our community still relies on the fact that when they dial 911, they get help quickly.”

That means having to stand up 19 ambulances across 30 fire stations for the more than half a million people in its jurisdiction — even when traffic is down.

“To maintain that, those funds certainly helped to make up a good part of that revenue loss,” Hurst said of the $467,000 his agency received in provider relief funds from HHS.

South Metro had other expenses from the pandemic. It had to buy a decontamination system for its fire stations, where it sprayed a hydrogen peroxide-based solution on equipment and vehicles to kill any traces of the virus.

Early on, Hurst said, the 700-employee agency tasked one worker to drive around with a mobile sprayer to do the cleaning before South Metro got the decontamination system into all of its stations.

“That went on for several months — there was one person whose full-time job was decontaminating ambulances from hospital to hospital,” he said. “They would put on a low-level hazmat suit with special boots and they would clean the back of the ambulance and the stretcher.”

Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

South Metro Fire Rescue Capt. Sheryl West uses an electrostatic sprayer to disinfect the Medic 12 ambulance in Littleton on April 19, 2020. She disinfects the entire interior of the vehicle after each run. Since the onset of the coronavirus and COVID-19, South Metro Fire Rescue has created three dedicated “decon” units, one for each shift. Their sole duty is to disinfect ambulances that have transported patients with suspected or confirmed cases of COVID-19.

The hospice ($157,000)

When Mike Weldon, executive director at Aurora’s Sun Tree Hospice of Colorado, saw the average stay of patients drop from 120 days to somewhere around 40 as the pandemic tightened its grip in 2020, he knew he was operating in a crisis environment.

“When that number drops like that, that means something huge is going on,” he said. “People are dying really quickly.”

And because older people have always been particularly susceptible to the virus, Sun Tree doctors, nurses, chaplains and caretakers had to be especially protected before seeing a patient so as not to infect them.

“All of us were trying to ramp up personal protective equipment so we could still serve people,” Weldon said. “Paying people more was a thing — getting people to cover shifts was a thing.”

Sun Tree, which serves about 50 patients during their final months of life at hospitals, nursing homes and in private residences, received nearly $157,000 in Provider Relief Funds. Weldon said many of their patients contracting with his hospice were in noticeably worse shape than had been the case before the pandemic.

“We received a lot more post-acute referrals than we would typically,” he said.

But Sun Tree was able to preserve its staffing levels during the pandemic, maintaining a 92% retention rate. And the hospice got a little help from Ford Motor Co., which sent it 500 face shields free of charge.

“I didn’t lay off anybody during the pandemic,” Weldon said.

The dentist ($109,000)

The big strike against Dr. Brian Richardson’s Littleton dental practice came during the seven weeks he was forced to shut down by state order early in the pandemic. With 15 employees to pay and $15,000 in monthly rent to cover, it quickly became a sink-or-swim issue.

“Initially we lost a ton of money,” Richardson said of that trying time in March and April 2020. “The funds went to pay wages during the time when we weren’t getting any revenue.”

In all, Blanchard & Richardson Family Dentistry secured nearly $109,000 in provider relief funds from the federal government, about which Richardson says he is “extremely grateful.”

“I could have stayed in business without it, but it helped me not have to make substantial changes to my business,” he said of his 20-year-old practice just north of the Douglas County line.

COVID-19 infections among his staff were an additional burden on business, Richardson said. When one was forced to quarantine, 40 to 50 patients were taken off the schedule book in a single week.

“We just ended up canceling patients,” he said.

The recent labor shortage has also hit Blanchard & Richardson hard. His Craigslist ads for dental hygienists have yielded three applicants, one of which demanded a negative pressure room in which to work. Richardson ended up persuading a 60-year-old neighbor, and retired dental hygienist, to return to the office to help manage the patient load.

Then there was the skyrocketing cost of personal protective equipment in his office to contend with. A box of gloves climbed from $10 a box to $40.

“It’s been ridiculous how much some of these supply costs have gone up,” Richardson said.

And because his practice is not part of a corporate chain of dentist’s offices, he can’t absorb the advancing prices as easily as the big players can.

“I don’t have the ability to go in and negotiate contracts with suppliers or insurance,” Richardson said. “It doesn’t mean we’re charging more — it just means we can’t scale down costs.”

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What It’ll Take to Have Actually Good COVID Summers

April 15, 2022 by Staff Reporter

Almost exactly 12 months ago, America’s pandemic curve hit a pivot point. Case counts peaked—and then dipped, and dipped, and dipped, on a slow but sure grade, until, somewhere around the end of May, the numbers flattened and settled, for several brief, wonderful weeks, into their lowest nadir so far.

I refuse to use the term hot vax summer (oops, just did), but its sentiment isn’t exactly wrong. A year ago, the shots were shiny and new, and a great match for the variants du jour; by the start of June, roughly half of the American population had received their first injections, all within the span of a few months—a remarkable “single buildup of immunity,” says Virginia Pitzer, an epidemiologist at Yale. The winter surges had run their course; schools were letting out for the season; the warm weather was begging for outdoor gatherings, especially in the country’s northern parts. A confluence of factors came together in a stretch that, for a time, “really was great,” Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, told me.

It’s now the spring of 2022, and at a glance, the stop-SARS-CoV-2 stars would seem to be aligning once more. Like last time, cases have dropped from a horrific winter peak; like last time, people have built up a decent bit of immunity; like last time, rising temperatures are nudging people outside. Already, one of the pandemic’s best-publicized models is projecting that this summer could look about as stellar as the start of last.

These trends don’t guarantee good times. If anything, national case counts—currently a woeful underestimate of reality—have started to creep upward in the past couple of weeks, as an Omicron subvariant called BA.2 continues its hostile takeover. And no one knows when or where this version of the virus will spit us out of its hypothetical surge. “I have learned to not predict where this is going,” says Theresa Chapple, a Chicago-area epidemiologist.

Read: America is staring down its first so what? wave

In crisis, it’s easy to focus our attention on waves—the worst a pandemic can bring. And yet, understanding the troughs—whether high, low, or kind of undecided—is just as essential. The past two years have been full of spastic surges; if the virus eventually settles down into something more subdued, more seasonal, and more sustained, these between-bump stretches may portend what COVID looks like at baseline: its true off-season.

At these times of year, when we can reliably expect there to be far less virus bopping around, our relationship to COVID can be different. But lulls are not automatic. They cannot be vacations. They’re intermissions that we can use to prepare for what the virus serves up next.

Lulls, like waves, are the products of three variables—how fast a virus moves, how hospitable its hosts are to infection, and how often the two parties are forced to collide. Last year’s respite managed to hit a trifecta: a not-too-speedy virus met fresh vaccines while plenty of people were still on high alert. It was enough to stave off COVID’s worst, and tamp transmission down.

This time around, some of the variables are a bit different. The virus, for one, has changed. In the past year, SARS-CoV-2 has only gotten better at its prime operative of infecting us. High transmissibility nudges the natural set point of the pandemic higher: When the virus moves this fast among us, it’s simply harder to keep case levels ultralow. “We have a lot less breathing room than we used to,” says Alyssa Bilinski, a health-policy researcher at Brown University.

The situation arguably looks a bit better on the host side. By some estimates, population immunity in the U.S. could be near its all-time high. At least 140 million Americans—perhaps many more—have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 since the pandemic’s start; some 250 million have dosed up at least once with a vaccine. Swirl those stats together, and it’s reasonable to estimate that more than 90 to 95 percent of the country has now glimpsed the coronavirus’s spike protein in some form or another, many of them quite recently. On top of that, America has added a few tools to its defensive arsenal, including a heftier supply of at-home tests to identify infection early and super-effective oral antivirals to treat it.

But any discussion of immunity has to be tempered with a question: immunity … against what? Although defenses against serious illness stick around pretty stubbornly, people’s safeguards against infection and transmission erode in the months after they’ve been infected or vaccinated—which means that 90 to 95 percent exposed doesn’t translate to 90 to 95 percent immune. Compared with last spring, the map of protection is also much patchier, and the range of immunity much wider. Some people have now banked several infections and vaccinations; others are many months out from their most recent exposure, or haven’t logged any at all. Add to that the trickiness of sustaining immunity in people who are older or immunocompromised, and the mediocrity of America’s booster campaign, and it’s easy to see how the country still has plenty of vulnerable pockets for the virus to exploit.

Read: Will Omicron leave all of us immune?

Then there’s the mess of us—our policies and our individual choices. The patterns of viral spread “depend a lot on what we as a society do, and how we interact,” Yonatan Grad, who studies infectious-disease dynamics at Harvard, told me. A concerted effort to mitigate transmission through masking, for instance, could help counteract the virus’s increased contagiousness, and squish case curves back down nice and low. But the zeal for such measures is all but gone. Even amid the rise of actual waves, “the willingness to take on interventions has gotten smaller,” Yale’s Pitzer told me. During declines and lulls, people have even less motivation to act.

The more the virus is allowed to mosey about, the more chances it will have to mutate and adapt. “Variants are always the wild card,” says Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Already, America is watching BA.2—the speedier sister to the viral morph that clobbered the country this winter (now retconned as BA.1)—overtake its sibling and spark outbreaks, especially across the northeast. Perhaps BA.2 will drive only a benign case bump. Maybe a sharp surge will happen, but contract quickly, ushering the country out of spring with even more immunity on its side. Or BA.2’s rise will turn dramatic and prolonged, and sour summer’s start all on its own. Nor is BA.2 the worst-case scenario we could imagine, Sethi told me. Though it’s faster than BA.1, it doesn’t appear to better sidestep the immune shields left behind by infection or vaccines. SARS-CoV-2’s relentless mutational churn could still slingshot something far more problematic our way; already, a slew of recombinant variants and other Omicron subvariants are brewing.

I asked Deshira Wallace, a public-health researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, what would make this summer less than rosy—or possibly, close to cataclysmic. “Continuing as is right now,” she told me. The pandemic is indeed still going, and the U.S. is at a point where excessive mingling could prolong the crisis. Tracking rises in cases, and responding to them early, is crucial for keeping a soft upslope from erupting into a full-on surge. And yet, across the nation, “we’ve been seeing every single form of protection revoked,” Wallace said. Indoor mask mandates have disappeared. Case-tracking surveillance systems have pulled back or gone dark. Community test and vaccination sites have vanished. Even data out of hospitals have begun to falter and fizz. Federal funds to combat the pandemic have dried up too, imperiling stocks of treatments and care for the uninsured, as the nation’s leaders continue to play chicken with what it means for coronavirus cases to stay “low.” And though many of the tools necessary to squelch SARS-CoV-2 exist, their distribution is still not being prioritized to the vulnerable populations who most need them. Spread is now definitively increasing, yet going unmeasured and unchecked.

Americans would have less to worry about if they reversed some of these behavioral trends, Wallace told me. But she’s not counting on it. Which puts the onus on immunity, or sheer luck on the variant side, to countervail, which are gambles as well. Say no new variant appears, but immunity inevitably erodes, and no one masks—what then? Behavior is the variable we hold most sway over, but America’s grip has loosened. Last year, around this time, “there were more protections in place,” Wallace said. “Now it just feels like we’re in chaos.”

Even last summer’s purported reprieve was a bit of an illusion. That lull felt great because it was the pandemic’s kindest so far in the United States. But even at its scarcest, the virus was still causing “about 200 deaths per day, which translates to about 73,000 deaths per year,” Bilinski told me. That’s worse than even what experts tend to consider a very bad flu season, when annual mortality levels hit about 50,000 or 60,000, Harvard’s Grad told me. (Stats closer to 10,000 or 20,000 deaths in a season are on the “low” end.) To chart a clearer future with COVID, even during lulls, the United States will have to grapple with a crucial question, says Shruti Mehta, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: “What’s the acceptable level of mortality per day?”

There’s a bit of a bind to work through here. With SARS-CoV-2’s dominant variants now as fast-spreading as they are, infections will remain tough to stave off, at least in the near term. The U.S. is growing only less equipped to track cases accurately, given the shift to home tests, which are rarely reported; community-level data collection is also in disastrous flux. So in some respects, the success of future COVID off-seasons might be better defined by hospitalizations or deaths, UT Health’s Jetelina noted, as many other infectious diseases are. It’s the exact shift that the Biden administration and the CDC have been pushing the population toward, and there is at least some logic to it. Thanks in large part to the potency of vaccines, infections have continued to untether from serious illnesses; speedy diagnostics and treatments have made a big dent as well. (Consider, for instance, that COVID hospital admissions have now dipped below last summer’s lows, even though documented cases have not.)

But merely tracking hospitalizations and deaths as a benchmark of progress doesn’t prevent those outcomes; they’ve already come to pass. By the time serious illness is on the rise, it’s too late to halt a surge in transmission that imperils high-risk groups or triggers a rash of long-COVID cases. That makes proactiveness during case lulls key: The virus doesn’t have to be actively battering a country’s shields for them to get a shoring up. It’s tempting to chill during low-case stretches—“ignore the virus for a little while, stick our heads in the sand,” says Andrea Ciaranello, an infectious-disease physician at Massachusetts General Hospital. But it’s wiser, she said, to realize that efforts to build capacity at community, state, and federal levels can’t rest during off-seasons. Lulls do tend to end. It’s best if they don’t catch people off guard when they do.

I asked nearly a dozen experts where they’d focus their resources now, to ameliorate the country’s COVID burden in the months and years ahead. Almost all of them pointed to two measures that would require intense investments now, but pay long-term dividends—all without requiring individuals, Chapple told me, to take repeated, daily actions to stay safe: vaccines, to blunt COVID’s severity; and ventilation, to clean indoor air. Other investments could similarly pay off when cases rise again. More widespread wastewater-surveillance efforts, Ciaranello says, could give public-health officials an early glimpse of the virus. Paid-sick-leave policies could offer workers the flexibility to isolate and seek care. If masking requirements stay in place on buses, trains, subways, and planes, they could more seamlessly move into other indoor public places when needed. “The more we’re willing to do that’s happening in the background, the more headroom we have,” Bilinski told me.

Read: We’re entering the control phase of the pandemic

Most essential of all, vaccines, tests, masks, and treatments will need to become and remain available, accessible, and free to all Americans, regardless of location, regardless of insurance. Supply alone is not enough: Leaders would need to identify the communities most in need, and concentrate resources there—an approach, experts told me, that the U.S. would ideally apply both domestically and abroad. A truly good summer would be one in which “we felt like the risk level was more comparable across populations, across individuals,” Mehta told me. America, much less the globe, is nowhere near that benchmark yet.

As grand as last summer might have felt, it was also a time when the U.S. dawdled. Inequities went unaddressed. International aid fell short. Delta gained steam in parts of the American South where vaccination rates were low, and where people were cloistering indoors to beat the heat, then trickled into the east, west, and north. The pandemic simmered; Americans looked away, and let the crisis boil over again. Instead of holding last summer up as our paragon, we would do better to look ahead to the next one, and the next—moving past wanting things as they were, and instead imagining what they could be.

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Nigeria: USAID Launches $3.5m Activity to Improve Water Safety in Jigawa, Kano

April 15, 2022 by Staff Reporter

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through Partners for Development has launched a three-year $3.5 million Water Improvement and Sanitation Enhancement (WISE) activity to improve water safety in Jigawa and Kano states.

A statement by USAID stated that the WISE activity would reduce the occurrence and impact of waterborne diseases through improvements in access to clean drinking water and sanitation, and the adoption of key hygiene behaviors. It explained that one of the first tasks would be to construct or rehabilitate 30 water access points and install 55 sanitation facilities in schools and community health centers, “these improved water access points will provide clean drinking water to more than 66,000 local residents.”

In her remarks, USAID Deputy Mission Director Katie Donohoe said, “Access to basic water, sanitation, and hygiene services within a community are the cornerstone of a healthy, equitable, and prosperous Nigeria.”

She added, “When this is done, each community will have a first line defense against the spread of infectious disease and allow children to spend more time in school.”

On his part, the Deputy Governor of Jigawa State Umar Namadi stated: “Water is life, and it has been one of the priorities of the Jigawa State government. We are ready to cooperate with the USAID WISE activity to ensure that safe drinking water is provided to the people of the state.”

The statement revealed that in 2019 Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene National Outcome Routine Mapping report, two out of five schools in Jigawa State, and three out of four in Kano State did not have access to reliable drinking water. The statement also stated that frontline healthcare workers also lacked access to safe water and struggle to deliver high quality health services.

The statement also noted that the survey found that over half of community water access services in Jigawa broke down within their first year of operation, while over 20 percent in Kano no longer functioned after six months. The statement added that the WISE activity would work toward addressing some of the deficiencies and increase the capacity of local stakeholders to sustain and manage equitable access to water and sanitation.

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Renters, do your due diligence

April 15, 2022 by Staff Reporter

When renting private-sector apartments not affiliated with any university, students and their parents should do their homework before signing that lease.

Vigilance should be your watchword, or else you may belatedly discover that your landlord has taken serious shortcuts in the maintenance of rental properties.

Due to recent developments, a few UMass Lowell and Fitchburg State University students might just be experiencing some renters’ remorse.

As reported in this newspaper, two owners of four companies and apartments marketed to Lowell and Fitchburg college students have been charged with 106 counts of violating the Massachusetts Clean Air Act in their handling of asbestos, according to state Attorney General Maura Healey.

A grand jury indicted brothers Christopher L. “Christie” DeRosa, 68, and Steven J. DeRosa, 62, on 28 and 22 counts, respectively, of Clean Air Act violations.

The indictments also charge four companies associated with the brothers’ business.

The brothers and companies stand accused of illegally demolishing, storing and transporting asbestos waste.

The allegations stem from renovation work at four Lowell apartment buildings and one Fitchburg multifamily house.

The brothers, longtime area landlords and real estate developers, face arraignment in Middlesex Superior Court and Worcester Superior Court.

Asbestos is especially prevalent in older buildings.

If asbestos fibers are released into the air and inhaled, it can damage the lungs, cause scarring, malfunction and potentially life-threatening illnesses.

These charges don’t signify guilt; the defendants are presumed innocent until proven otherwise.

But the potentially serious health consequences contained in these charges behoove prospective renters to properly vet that property owner before making that commitment.

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6 Questionable Things We Did At The Beginning of the Pandemic

April 15, 2022 by Staff Reporter

Let’s set the scene. It’s March 2020. We’re all stuck at home with nothing to do. We start behaving…strangely. Doing things we’ve never done before. Taking on tasks we have no experience with. Becoming a version of ourselves we do not recognize.

These are some of the things we obsessed over when “unprecedented times” was a new term.

Drive-by Celebrations: For graduations, birthdays, proposals, baby showers…you name it, we were driving around the block to celebrate.
Baking, mostly bread: Suddenly everyone summoned the power Ina Garten, Rachel Ray, and the Cake Boss. All of our bread escapades even led to a national flour shortage.
Tiger King: Girl……….yikes. We went absolutely feral for that show. 64 million households tuned in to season 1. A really dark part of our past. We need to learn from that.
Hand Washing Tutorials: Honestly, the first red flag of this whole thing should’ve been that no one knew how to wash their hands. Baby if you need a 20 second song to help you clean your hands after the bathroom then you shouldn’t be leaving the house anyway.
Photos of Deserted Places: Actually idk why this is on the list because it was pretty interesting to see Time Square and Disney World totally empty. But also a little creepy.
Disinfecting Our Mail: Jail. Immediately. You have to admit, even if you did this, it was a lot. And literally no one told us to do that.

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City of Cocoa to Modify Disinfection Process to Treat Drinking Water Beginning May 21

April 15, 2022 by Staff Reporter

disinfection process to be modified for approximately four weeks

To continue to maintain high water quality in the City of Cocoa’s water distribution system, the Cocoa Utilities Department will temporarily modify the disinfection process used to treat drinking water beginning May 21, for approximately four weeks. (City of Cocoa image)

BREVARD COUNTY • COCOA, FLORIDA – To continue to maintain high water quality in the City of Cocoa’s water distribution system, the Cocoa Utilities Department will temporarily modify the disinfection process used to treat drinking water beginning May 21, for approximately four weeks.

The change in water disinfection method will provide additional protection against contamination to help ensure that your water remains safe as we enter the summer months. This is a temporary change in water chemistry that will not affect the safety of your drinking water.

The periodic and temporary conversion from chloramines (which are a longer-lasting disinfectant) to free chlorine (which is a stronger disinfectant), helps to ensure the quality of the drinking water in the distribution system.

The maintenance program, which is a normal procedure for water systems, is supported by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and will include testing to monitor water quality and measure the effectiveness of the program. After this process is completed, we will revert to disinfection by the chloramines method.

Customers served by the Cocoa Utilities Department may notice a slight chlorine taste or odor in their tap water during this period. These temporary conditions will not cause adverse health effects. If you are especially sensitive to the taste or odor of chlorine, keep an open container of drinking water in your refrigerator for a few hours to allow the chlorine to dissipate.

Customers on dialysis who use a proportioning machine to prepare dialysate are advised to contact their physician to obtain the appropriate steps to accommodate the change in water disinfection. Customers who have fish tanks or aquatic species are advised to contact a professional aquarist to avoid any problems associated with chlorine.

The Cocoa Utilities Department is committed to providing clean, fresh drinking water to all customers.

For more information, visit the City of Cocoa’s frequently asked questions page HERE. You can also reach out to Don Downs, Utilities Conservation and PR Officer at 321- 433-8705 or [email protected].

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GET READY FOR GOBBLERS | State

April 15, 2022 by Staff Reporter

Timing alone would make it special. Pennsylvania’s upcoming spring gobbler season – the state’s only big-game hunt outside of fall and winter – takes place when the world seems new, freshly green and alive.

This year’s season begins on Saturday, April 23 with a one-day hunt for junior and youth mentored hunters, then runs from Saturday, April 30 to Tuesday, May 31 for everyone else.

But it has a lot more going for it than just that.

Gobbler hunting is huge on excitement, too. There are few things as thrilling as calling in a wary turkey. No wonder more than 150,000 hunters take to forests and fields each spring to chase these birds.

Plenty of opportunity awaits them, as usual. In fact, Game Commission turkey biologist Mary Jo Casalena said the statewide flock – always among the largest anywhere in the East – is likely bigger right now than at any time in the last few years.

She credited that increase to a number of factors.

First, 2021’s recruitment – or influx of new turkeys into the population – was very good, courtesy of warm, dry weather last spring and, in places, lots of cicadas to eat. Survey work revealed 3.1 poults per hen, on average, statewide.

“That was our highest ratio since we began monitoring recruitment,” Casalena said.

A smaller-than-usual spring 2021 harvest and shorter fall turkey seasons in some Wildlife Management Units (WMUs), coupled with a statewide elimination of rifles for fall turkey hunting, also surely boosted flocks.

“That should all translate into a lot of high-spirited jakes on the landscape,” Casalena said. “Hunters should find a larger-than-normal percentage of older, 3-year-old turkeys out there, too. So there’s certainly reason for optimism again this year.”

Those birds won’t necessarily be easy to harvest; neither jakes nor older birds typically are as vocal as 2-year-olds, she added. But hunters can up their odds of tangling with a tom turkey by preparing before opening day.

Casalena recommends scouting, looking either for actual birds, turkey sign such as droppings, feathers, scratchings and tracks, or at least places where turkeys might be, like openings close to and easily accessible from roosting areas where gobblers prefer to strut.

All the while, back home, practice calling.

“The most important call is the hen yelp,” Casalena said. “The hunter wants to imitate a hen to attract the gobbler to come within range. After that it’s a matter of practicing and learning other calls like the different cackles and purrs and understanding when to use each. Friction calls have great sound and pitch, while mouth calls are the most convenient, especially when being still is important.”

None of that guarantees success, of course. About 15 percent of hunters harvested one gobbler last spring overall. About 18 percent of the near-record 25,210 people who bought a special spring turkey license, or second gobbler tag, took a second. Those figures are comparable to long-term averages.

But the only hunters to fill their tags are those who go out and hunt. So this spring, visit turkey country and see what happens.

“There’s never a bad time to be in the woods, especially when getting out offers the chance to square off with one of our amazing if unpredictable gobblers,” Casalena said.

Hours, licensing and regulations

All participants in the youth hunt must be accompanied by adults as required by law. A complete list of regulations applying to mentored youth and junior hunters can be found in the 2020-21 Pennsylvania Hunting & Trapping Digest, which provided with a hunting license and is available online at www.pgc.pa.gov.

Hunting hours during the youth hunt end at noon. Junior hunters and mentored youth also may participate in the statewide spring gobbler season.

Hunting hours begin one-half hour before sunrise and end at noon for the first two weeks of the statewide season (April 30 through May 14). Hunters are asked to be out of the woods by 1 p.m. when hunting hours end at noon. This is to minimize disturbance of nesting hens.

From May 16 through May 31, hunting hours are from one-half hour before sunrise until one-half hour after sunset. The all-day season allows more opportunity at the point in the season when hunting pressure is lower and nesting hens are less likely to abandon nests.

During the spring gobbler season, hunters may use manually operated or semiautomatic shotguns limited to a three-shell capacity in the chamber and magazine combined. Muzzleloading shotguns, crossbows and long, recurve and compound bows also are permitted. For a complete list of regulations, consult the Pennsylvania Hunting & Trapping Digest, available on the agency’s website.

Only bearded birds may be harvested during the spring season, and hunting is permitted by calling only. Hunters should refrain from knowingly harvesting bearded hens because they do nest and raise broods.

There is no requirement for hunters to wear fluorescent orange during the spring turkey season, though wearing it is recommended while moving.

Blinds used while turkey hunting must be manufactured with manmade materials of sufficient density to block movement within the blind from an observer outside the blind. Blinds must completely enclose the hunter on all four sides and from above. It is unlawful to hunt turkeys from blinds made of natural materials such as logs, tree branches and piled rocks.

Blinds that represent the fanned tail of a gobbler do not hide all hunter movement, and therefore are unlawful to use in Pennsylvania.

It is unlawful, as well as unsafe, to stalk turkeys or turkey sounds. All hunters need to wait patiently and properly identify their targets prior to pulling the trigger. When in a stationary position, a hunter should sit with his or her back against a large tree, rock or other barrier that shields movement and offers protection from others who might approach from the rear.

Turkey hunters should not wear clothing that contains black, like the color found on a turkey’s body, or red, white or blue, like those on a turkey’s head.

Pennsylvania hunters again this year can purchase a license to harvest a second gobbler in the spring season, but only one gobbler may be taken per day. This license must be purchased no later than April 29, the day before the statewide season begins.

The $21.97 license ($41.97 for nonresidents) may be purchased online but cannot be printed at home, so purchasing it directly from an issuing agent might be the better option. The same goes for general hunting licenses. General hunting licenses purchased online also are sent by mail, and shipping charges apply.

Successful turkey hunters must immediately tag their bird before moving it from the harvest site and are required by law to report the harvest to the Game Commission.

Hunters, by law, must report harvests within 10 days.

Reporting harvests is key to turkey management, as it allows the Game Commission to more accurately estimate harvest and population totals.

Hunters can report turkeys in any of three ways: by visiting www.pgc.pa.gov and clicking the blue “Report a Harvest” button near the top of the home page; by calling 1-800-838-4431; or by filling out and mailing the harvest report card in the digest hunters get when they buy a license.

Have your harvest tag in front of you when reporting to be sure you can provide all of the requested information.

Hunters also are asked to report any turkeys they harvest with leg bands. Information collected on those birds – which are legal to take – helps estimate spring harvest rate and annual survival rate by Wildlife Management Unit, Casalena said. That’s critical to developing the state’s turkey population model.

Leg bands feature a toll-free number or email address for reporting.

Learn more about turkey hunting

There’s a learning curve when it comes to getting started in any activity. That’s no less true of turkey hunting.

Longtime hunters can surely share stories of mistakes they made along the way.

But there is some help available. Newcomers, and others who want to pick up some new tricks, can take advantage of the Game Commission’s new Learn to Hunt program, which is conducting three online seminars on turkey hunting this spring.

The first focused on the gear that turkey hunters use, from the different type of shotguns, shells, camouflage, calls and decoys. The second covered the biology of the wild turkey and discussed topics such as where turkeys like to roost in the evenings, where they head in the mornings, what their different sounds mean, and how you can use this information to your advantage when scouting and hunting. Both seminars were recorded and are posted on the Game Commission YouTube channel.

The final seminar will take place on Monday, April 18th at 7:00 PM, and focus on hunting tips and tactics. The host for this seminar is Matt Morrett, a champion turkey caller who is recognized as one of the best turkey hunters in North America. Matt will share some of his experiences and provide insights on how to fill your tag.

To register to view this seminar live, or to view the previous seminars, visit the Learn to Hunt page at the Game Commission’s website at http://bit.ly/pgclearntohunt.

There’s a lot to love about hunting in springtime, but ticks aren’t one of them.

Ticks are active at this time and potentially carry Lyme disease or other tickborne illness. So spring gobbler hunters are wise to take precautions.

To start, treat clothing and gear with products containing 0.5% permethrin, an insecticide that disrupts the nervous system of ticks, paralyzing and often killing them.

Be sure to read the label’s instructions regarding application, which must be done in a well-ventilated area while avoiding skin contact with the agent. Most products containing permethrin guarantee effectiveness for six weeks – enough to last all turkey season – or six washes in the laundry, at which time garments and gear can be retreated.

Even with treated clothes, though, there’s still a chance you’ll bring a hitchhiking tick into your house alive. Those odds drop if hunting clothes are removed and left on the porch or garage before going inside.

You’ll still want to check your body thoroughly for ticks after each time in the woods, especially those body-heat centers including the waistband, underarms, between the legs and on the back of the knees that ticks prefer. Showering as soon as you can after being outdoors can wash off unattached ticks and allows you to more thoroughly look for them. Use a mirror for hard-to-see places.

And don’t forget to take other steps to block ticks from making it to your skin in the first place. Tuck in your shirt. Tuck your pant legs into your boots or socks or consider wearing gaiters. And tightly cinch knee-high rubber boots.

Turkey hunters should be aware that multiple cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) virus have been detected in wild birds in Pennsylvania.

HPAI is a disease that can infect domestic and wild birds. It can also infect humans, though the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has declared that the current HPAI outbreak is primarily an animal health issue that poses low risk to the health of the general public. No human cases related to this avian influenza virus have been detected or reported in the United States.

Still, hunters should take some common-sense steps to protect themselves.

· Harvest only healthy-looking birds.

· Wear gloves when handling any wild birds, and change gloves and disinfect hands between handling live birds.

· Change clothing as needed, especially if visibly soiled or if any birds handled made contact with your clothing.

· Change clothing, including footware, and wash hands well before coming in contact with any pet birds or domestic poultry

If you find a bird that looks unhealthy – perhaps stumbling, circling, exhibiting tremors, with a twisted neck, or unable to fly – contact the Game Commission by phone at 610-926-3136 or by email at [email protected]. If you have had contact with sick or dead domestic or wild birds and are not feeling well, contact your primary care physician or the Pennsylvania Department of Health at 877-724-3258.

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Originally Appeared Here

How to evict dangerous mold | Health & Food

April 14, 2022 by Staff Reporter

Specialists share the method and madness in getting rid of indoor mold

With a case of suspected mold growth indoors, it’s time to turn to the professionals. Mold can wreak havoc on people’s lives from their wallet to their brain, so what does it take to get rid of the culprit?

Two mold remediation specialists, Michael Rubino and John K. Taylor, explained the equation for remediation.

All American Restoration founder Rubino–known as “the mold medic”–is a prominent expert on mold remediation. Rubino is an advocate for legislation and an educator on mold remediation.

Taylor founded Madison Taylor Indoor Environmental Inc. in 2000. Taylor has several acronyms to his name–from Council-Certified Indoor Environmentalist (CIE) to Applied Microbial Remediation Technician (AMRT).

Mold remediation is a collective process–involving inspection, testing, and cleaning–but what calls them in is water. It can be water damage, lack of humidity controls, or improper HVAC filtration. When water meets an organic food source, which is most building materials or debris, that is grounds for mold growth.

Even without organic building materials, Taylor said, “You collect 20-30 pounds of dirt, hair, dead skin, what have you inside ductwork every year. You throw moisture and humidity on top of that, and you’ve got a petri dish.”

The key is to mitigate conditions for mold growth. Water damage must be addressed before mold can grow (24-48 hours), humidity should remain below 60 percent, and HVAC systems need annual maintenance.

With modern energy efficiency goals, Rubino said, “Net zero energy efficiency requires sealing our buildings. Making them airtight [means it’s] more important to ensure the air inside is healthy air.” Taylor added that “the conditioning part [of the air conditioning system] is to reduce the relative humidity.” Rubino emphasized the importance of water drainage and diversion.

Taylor outlined their remediation process: test the mold, assess indoor air quality, measure moisture, identify the source, and move forward with cleaning. “The object isn’t to kill mold, it’s to remove it,” said Rubino.

Mold poses a problem from root to spore. “The industry standard is that if you see mold on drywall, you have to cut it out because the root system can get into the drywall. So even if you wipe it off or treat it, the root system is still inside the drywall,” Taylor explained.

On the other end, Rubino said that killing the mold doesn’t address the particles left behind. “Plants reproduce with seeds just like mold reproduces with spores… [you] have to remove the living organisms and the particles produced by them. It only fails because you failed to address both sides of the equation,” he said.

That means that their process of cleaning can look like sealing things off, using filtration technology, and losing some things that can’t be salvaged.

“Every time you see mold it’s not always a significant problem but sometimes it is. That should be evaluated by somebody certified,” said Taylor. There are industry standards but, Taylor said, “A lot of states and governments have not gotten involved in regulating this in any way.”

Rubino said that the systems in place are “not looking at this as an epidemic [when] it is and it’s getting worse, and I know that because every year we get more people contacting us… you take 20,000 breaths per day [but] we’re not paying attention to how what we’re breathing can create an impact.”

When it comes down to funding, Rubino explained how investment into researching mold would pay off with reduced stress on our medical institutions and disability programs. He presented a bill to Ohio legislatures, HB 251, that would validate indoor mold as a problem and create an active program.

Change starts with awareness. Rubino urged, “Anytime a law is going to change, there needs to be demand for change.”

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Originally Appeared Here

Why you may still need an air purifier in S’pore even if there’s no haze – Mothership.SG

April 14, 2022 by Staff Reporter

We all appreciate the small things in life differently, like a cup of coffee or purified air. But the lifestyle preferences of some may turn out to be an essential need for others.

Take an air purifier for instance.

You take a breath and smell nothing amiss. Is there really a need for an air purifier even when there is no haze in Singapore, you ask?

Someone who is allergic to dust mites, pollen and mould, or those with dry and sensitive skin, may answer: Yes.

Discomforts caused by small particles in the air that are not related to haze

Tiny little particles like dust mites and pollen can cause irritation and other allergic reactions of varying degrees.

Nine out of 100 people in Singapore are allergic to dust mites and their droppings.

As close relatives of ticks and spiders, dust mites are tiny microscopic creatures, around 300 times smaller than a strand of hair. They also multiply quickly in Singapore because of the warm and humid weather.

Pollen from trees and plants can cause pollen allergy to flare up too, also known as hay fever — especially common during flowering seasons. Hay fever is prevalent among young children and affects about 24 per cent of the Singapore population.

Additionally, many Singaporeans have taken on a new role as pawrents in recent years.

Some pawrents may unexpectedly develop pet allergies after living with their furkids.

Pet allergies are not triggered by animal fur but by dander, which refers to flakes of skin underneath the pet’s fur or hair.

Having your beloved furkids running about at home, you may find relief from having an air purifier, which can help to remove these small particles and their fur that are floating in the air.

Daikin’s CleAir air purifiers to the rescue

If you are considering buying an air purifier, Daikin’s CleAir air purifiers can also give you a “five ticks smile”. Just like their air-conditioners.

Instead of using a mesh to trap particles, Daikin’s CleAir air purifiers’ HEPA filters use electrostatic forces to capture small particles in the air, which translates to a lower risk of clogging.

These electrostatic HEPA filters can last up to 10 years.

Daikin’s CleAir air purifiers’ patented streamer discharge technology also sets them apart from other air purifiers.

With this technology, Daikin’s CleAir air purifiers claim to decompose allergens, deactivate bacteria and viruses, and remove harmful chemical substances.

These include dust mites, cockroach droppings, fungi, pollen, and formaldehyde. Formaldehyde, a colourless pungent gas, is a common indoor air pollutant. Sources of formaldehyde include building materials, household products, and furniture made of pressed wood like soft plywood.

You can see the full list of substances here.

To purify the indoor air, Daikin’s CleAir air purifiers have three air inlets that are placed away from the air outlet.

Pro tip: To enhance the air circulation in an air-conditioned room, place the Daikin’s air purifier opposite the air conditioner.

To be absolutely clear, that’s not to say that air purifiers will definitely solve all your problems when it comes to allergies or skin irritations — it is also important to keep the house clean and dust-free. Those who have skin or respiratory problems should also seek medical advice.

But if work-from-home arrangements are here to stay, having an air purifier may just be a worthwhile investment.

This is especially so for homebodies, those who do not have good ventilation at home, and those who switch on the air-conditioner for long periods of time.

Find out more about Daikin CleAir air purifiers here.

The “five ticks smile” jingle was ringing in the writer’s head while she wrote this sponsored article by Daikin.

Top image via Daikin Facebook

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Originally Appeared Here

Israel’s Water Technology: Sea Water To Drinking Water To Filling Up Sea Of Galilee

April 14, 2022 by Staff Reporter

Irregular rainfall, rising temperatures and intensive pumping have overtaxed the world’s lowest freshwater lake, which for decades has served as the Jewish state’s main sweetwater reservoir.

Israel now plans to tackle the challenge by reversing the water flow through its vast network of pumps, pipes and tunnels dating to the 1960s, the National Water Carrier.

Authorities hail the project as a showcase for Israel’s cutting-edge desalination and water management technology, which can also help deepen ties with arid Arab states.

Critics charge that Israel has long short-changed Palestinians out of their fair share of water, leaving much of the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip facing severe water stress.

And environmentalists note that the more Israel relies on fossil fuels to power its desalination plants, the more its carbon emissions will worsen climate change.

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A photo taken during a tour of the Hadera Desalination Facility on April 3, 2022 shows a general view of the location in the central Israeli coastal town of Hadera (AFP)

For now however, experts say, urgent action is needed to brace the country for global warming coupled with rapid population growth.

Israel’s average temperature has risen by two degrees Celsius over the past two decades, said Noam Halfon, a researcher at the Israel Meteorological Service.

A wet winter has just topped up the lake, but its level dipped substantially in the drought years of 2014-2018, a potential harbinger of worse to come.

“Some models predict we will have less precipitation overall, a reduction of 10 or 15 percent in the second half of the 21st century,” Halfon said.

Israel’s rapidly growing population adds to the need for the new water infrastructure project, he said.

“Every 30 years we double the population. Without this project, it would be an awful situation.”

– ‘Scarcity to abundance’ –

Ziv Cohen, an engineer at Israeli water company Mekorot, was overlooking a work site in northern Israel where a crane was lowering water pipe segments into trenches.

The verdant hillsides were scattered with blooming spring flowers, but Cohen said appearances are deceiving.

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A worker performs a routine inspection of filters at the Hadera Desalination Facility, in the central Israeli coastal town of Hadera on April 3 (AFP)

“In recent years, we have all felt a decrease in rainfall” in the lake’s catchment area, he told AFP.

Cohen said the one-billion-shekel (over $300-million) project will, by the end of the year, reverse the flow of the system which previously delivered lake water to areas across the country.

“The minute water flows through the pipeline, bringing excess water from desalination plants in the centre, we can raise the level of the Sea of Galilee, and it will become an operational reservoir,” he said.

About an hour’s drive away on the Mediterranean coast, David Muhlgay poured himself a glass of water made by the Hadera Desalination Plant, one of five in Israel.

“Israel has gone from water as a scarce product to an abundance of water in 15 years, which is phenomenal,” said Muhlgay, CEO of OMIS Water Ltd.

His plant produces 137 million cubic metres a year — 16 percent of Israel’s drinking water supply — with the capacity to produce 160 million cubic metres.

“We are ready to go” and connect to the new system, he said.

The seaside plant sits beside the coal and gas-fired plant that powers it, underscoring the contradictions in adapting to the climate crisis through energy-intensive desalination.

“Electricity needs to be sourced,” Muhlgay said, arguing that for now only fossil fuels can do the job.

“It cannot only rely, for the moment, on renewable sources.”

– ‘Lots of interest’-

Israel’s desalination expertise has opened new diplomatic avenues in the water-scarce Middle East, where it has established ties with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco.

Israel, Jordan and the UAE last year agreed in principle on a plan for Jordan to exchange solar power for Israeli water, which authorities told AFP would come from the Galilee.

Muhlgay said his plant had hosted visitors from Morocco, and the plant operator’s parent company IDE had sent a vice president to visit the UAE.

“There’s lots of interest in the Israeli technology,” Muhlgay said.

“If everybody is short of water, bringing water can solve a few problems.”

The situation for Palestinians has however scarcely budged despite the new technologies, said Ayman Rabi, executive director of the Palestinian Hydrology Group.

Israel exercises tight control over water resources in the occupied West Bank, with Palestinians granted limited access to an underground aquifer.

Under the terms of a 1990s peace agreement, Israel sells water back to Palestinians, but allocations have not kept pace with population growth.

To cope, Rabi said, Palestinians have begun planting crops that require less water, and made a concerted effort to catch rainwater.

“Of course (Israelis) are marketing themselves as water exporters,” he told AFP. “I don’t think this will impact the Palestinians.”

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Originally Appeared Here