The drunkenness water berth has get so desperate in Puerto Rico post - Hurricane Maria that the Environmental Protection AgencyreportedWednesday some the great unwashed areturning to wellson hazardous waste matter sites to find water .
Despite this latest update , President Donald Trump has insinuatedon Twitterthat the United States ca n’t keep Union agency on the island “ eternally . ”
… We can not keep FEMA , the Military & the First Responders , who have been amazing ( under the most unmanageable circumstances ) in P.R. forever !
— Donald J. Trump ( @realDonaldTrump)October 12 , 2017
As Trumpmentioned Thursday dawn , the island ’s infrastructure was a “ disaster ” before the hurricane . He ’s right about that , at least : Puerto Ricans scantily had admission to clean boozing water before Maria hit . This hurricane just made it worse .
As of 2015 , 99.5 percent of islander were wassail water from organisation in misdemeanor of the Safe Drinking Water Act . What does that look like , on the dot ? More than 80,000 assault , according to areportthe Natural Resources Defense Council released earlier this year with Puerto Rican environmental mathematical group El Puente and Asociación Nacional de Derecho Ambiental .
Now , the site is worsen . Three workweek have passed since the hurricane hit the U.S. soil as a Category 4 storm , and just 64 percent of its residents have potable weewee , according to government datum .
That leaves more than 1 million U.S. citizens without piddle .
But water is n’t attain dissimilar function of the island equitably : area like the metro and the South have 80 percentage of its people with water , but the West and the North are seeing about 70 percent without potable drinking water supply . So it ’s no curiosity people are look wherever they can to find a little aguita .
Per the EPA :
There are reports of residents obtaining , or trying to obtain , drinking water supply from wells at hazardous waste “ Superfund ” situation in Puerto Rico . EPA advises against tampering with sealed and locked wells or drinking from these wells , as it may be dangerous to people ’s health .
For those who do n’t know , Superfundsare sites the EPA designates as “ the nation ’s worst hazardous thriftlessness website , ” ones the EPA is presuppose to prioritize for cleanup because they ’re just that uncollectible .
Superfund site might beleaching nonsensical amounts of leadinto the soil orpolluting waterway with toxic chemicals like dioxin . Puerto Rico has18 sites , ranging frompesticide warehousesto aformer military weapons training field .
Superfund program web site are n’t mention in the NRDC story , but a serious numeral of those 80,000 + violations had everything to do with toxin : Between 2005 and 2015 , the island ’s body of water system committed 4,092 total wellness - based violations . These admit violations due to unlawful amounts of volatile organic compounds , coliform bacteria , and disinfection byproducts — all of which pose threat to human wellness .
Then , there ’s lead . About 97 percent of Puerto Ricans were using water systems in assault of the Lead and Copper Rule . The report submit :
All but one of these violations were for failure to screen for lead or to report problems to health office or the world . In one case , a organization was also plunder lead story treatment rules . In some cases , water samples exceed EPA ’s Lead Action Level , which is not an enforceable standard but indicates unreasonable lead in water .
So Puerto Rico ’s always had it bad when it add up to its water . This is also true for itsnow - destroyed electric grid . These tenuous and failing system needed oeuvre way before Hurricane Maria arrive at . What ’s changed is how much the storm has stressed these systems and the citizenry who depend on them — press Puertoriqqueños to do-or-die limits .
Drinking waterPollution
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