#she has to take at least a daily boiling bath in the north

[deaneyrs]

thinking about dany standing in the snow of the north for the first time, mesmerized and shivering as if she has the most violent of fevers. pressing her hand against cold stone and ice, her palm quickly turns from blood flushed to a light shade of blue. no amount of furs can keep the chill away. no amount of fire can warm her.

[tortuga-aak]

The US could have avoided Puerto Rico's water crisis

After Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, more than 2.5 million residents are still without power.

Officials estimate that more than one-third of residents still don't have access to clean water.

Aid agencies and relief experts say that some of the problems could have been avoided.

The numbers associated with the current situation in Puerto Rico, one month after Hurricane Maria struck the U.S. territory, are baffling.

More than 2.5 million residents are still without power. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is able to offer 200,000 meals to Puerto Ricans daily — but it needs to feed 2 million people. Perhaps most baffling, or at least exasperating, President Donald Trump gives himself a perfect 10 for his response to the storm’s aftermath.

One of the most pressing issues on the island is access to clean water. Officials estimate that more than 1 in 3 residents in Puerto Rico doesn’t have it.

Aid agencies on the ground say the number is closer to 1 in 2. Families are drinking water contaminated with sewage and dead animals. Others are drawing from toxic Superfund sites. There have been at least 10 cases of leptospirosis from drinking contaminated water — and officials are investigating four deaths which may have been caused by waterborne bacteria.

Simply put, this is an ongoing public health crisis.

Joe Raedle/Getty

Puerto Rico was in a tough spot before Maria tore through the Caribbean island. Economic and political factors complicated disaster response: The territory was already facing a debt crisis. And limited local resources and poor roads made it difficult to get supplies to storm survivors.

But aid agencies and relief experts believe the current predicament could have been avoided. There are international standards and a clear blueprint for how to get safe water to people after a disaster.

But so far, the federal response has failed in providing both immediate help and longer-term solutions — and part of the reason for that could boil down to discrimination.

“We’re a very capable nation, yet we don’t seem to have deployed our capabilities in this instance,” says John Mutter, a Columbia University professor and international disaster relief expert. “This isn’t rocket science. We know what we’re supposed to do. The fact that we’re not doing it needs explanation.”

According to the relief organization Oxfam, the minimum standards for disaster response have not been met. The aid group follows Sphere minimum standards — a set of universal benchmarks for humanitarian responses established in 1997 — which require, for instance, four gallons of water to be provided per day per person for bathing, cooking, and drinking. The water should be delivered in safe containers through water trucks, water bladders, or filters. And initial assistance is supposed to arrive within three to five days after a disaster.

REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

In this case, there has not been enough overall coordination of relief, according to Martha Thompson, Oxfam America’s program coordinator for disaster response in Puerto Rico. Truck deliveries of bottled water are sporadic, and she says that the military has sent water trucks to several sites without providing clean containers to safeguard the water.

U.S. Northern Command, which is coordinating the military’s aid efforts in Puerto Rico, confirmed reports that people are using potentially contaminated containers — often washed out detergent bottles — to collect water. In response, it’s distributing five-gallon collapsible buckets to residents to avoid the possibility of clean water being contaminated by dirty receptacles.

“The military is focused on delivering safe and drinkable water,” says Navy Lieutenant Sean McNevin. “We are very concerned about the safety of Puerto Ricans affected by the hurricane and we’ll make those recommendations and adjustments to what we deliver based on what we know on the ground.”

According to Peter Gleick, a climate and water scientist with the Bay Area public policy nonprofit the Pacific Institute, the U.S. government could have taken steps prior to or immediately after Maria hit Puerto Rico to speed up recovery. Within days of the storm’s landfall, Gleick recommended that the United States quickly move military assets, like desalination units that pull salt out of ocean water, to the islands.

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He adds that there should be more aggressive water testing to assure residents that they are using safe water sources. “The idea that there are communities forced to take water from wells on Superfund sites is completely inexcusable,” Gleick says.

On Thursday, CNN reported that Marc Edwards, the Virginia Tech environmental engineer who ran tests on the contaminated water in Flint, Michigan, had concluded that samples taken from wells at the Dorado Groundwater Contamination Superfund Site, near Puerto Rico’s capital of San Juan, were safe to drink.

Still, residents searching for water on toxic sites or relying on bottled water are the sort of problems the aid community says should have been dealt with long before the one-month mark. Recovery efforts should be transitioning into more sustainable long-term solutions.

“It’s unacceptable that people are still depending on water bottle deliveries for day-to-day survival,” says Oxfam’s Thompson, adding that people continue to fear that future shipments won’t arrive.

By now, what’s needed are water filters and solar-powered generators that communities can use to run pumps to access wells. There also needs to be significant improvement to the territory’s municipal water system, which wasn’t in great shape before the storm hit.

Gerald Herbert/AP

Earlier this year, the Natural Resources Defense Council published a report that found that Puerto Rico had the highest rate of drinking water violations of any state or territory in the United States.

“There’s a question as to whether or not the population was receiving safe drinking water before the storm,” says Adrianna Quintero, NRDC’s director of partner engagement. “So we can only expect that it’s going to be worse post-storm.”

The island’s current safe water shortage is closely tied to power outages, says Peter Gleick. With more than 70 percent of the island lacking power, he says, wastewater treatment and water delivery systems have stalled out.

“This isn’t just a water problem,” Gleick says. “It’s an energy problem.”

Ultimately, Puerto Rico’s status as a U.S. territory might be behind its slow recovery. As part of the United States, the island hasn’t seen the type of international aid that an independent developing country might receive. And yet Puerto Ricans have had to assert their U.S. citizenship to a federal government that allocates them no say in the electoral college or a Congress representative who can vote on legislation.

“There’s this idea that these are not American citizens who are going through this, which is blatantly false,” Quintero says. “I think there’s an element of discrimination there.”

According to Columbia’s Mutter, FEMA’s response to hurricanes Harvey in Houston and Irma in Florida seemed to show that it had learned its lessons from Hurricane Katrina. Critics attributed the agency’s slow response to the 2005 storm and the resulting humanitarian emergency in part to the fact that they affected a primarily black and poor population.

“Now it just seems like they’ve forgotten their lessons,” Mutter says about FEMA. “It seems callous, but it looks like maybe they don’t care as much about Puerto Rico.”

FEMA did not respond to requests for comment.

Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló seemed to agree with Mutter when he met with President Trump in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. “Give the U.S. citizens of Puerto Rico the adequate resources,” Rosselló pleaded. “Treat us the same as citizens in Texas and Florida and elsewhere.”

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[samanthasroberts]

Medieval beer purity law has Germany’s craft brewers over a barrel

When is a beer not a beer? When German authorities say it violates a 500-year-old decree, but some brewers are fighting back

Opening the lid of a huge brown boiling vessel, Stefan Fritsche flings a handful of hop pellets into the frothy whirl of liquid. Elsewhere in his brewery, a malt grinder rumbles away, a lab technician is busy testing new flavours and crates of Schwarzer Abt (Black Abbot) beer bound for far-flung places are being lifted on to a lorry by a forklift truck.

But the air of industry at Klosterbrauerei Neuzelle, a monastery brewery north of Berlin, feels like a daily act of defiance, says Fritsche. For years, authorities in the region tried to claim that Schwarzer Abt a thick, malty, smokey-tasting black beer containing sugar was not beer at all.

Neuzelles signature tipple, which has been brewed to the same monks recipe since 1410, fell foul of Germanys purity law, known in German as the Reinheitsgebot, a medieval food safety rule which deemed that beer could contain nothing other than water, barley, hops and, later, also yeast.

The law was decreed in 1516 by Munichs Duke Wilhelm IV over concerns that contaminants such as soot, poisonous roots and sawdust were being added to the beer-making process.

The bitter legal battle that ensued over Schwarzer Abt was won by the Brandenburg brewery more than a decade ago.

But as German beer enthusiasts prepare to mark the purity laws 500th anniversary later this month on what is known as German Beer Day, it is still upheld as a vanguard in the fight against the strictest beer-making rules in the world.

A brewery worker checks bottles of Klosterbrauerei Neuzelles Schwarzer Abt (Black Abbot) beer. Photograph: Christian Jungeblodt for the Guardian

Up to the point we add the sugar, we brew according to the purity law, says Fritsche, but the agriculture ministry told me it could not be called beer. If I made it here and sold it abroad I could call it that, or if I made it abroad and exported back to Germany that would also be OK, but because we were brewing on German soil, it could not carry the name beer even though wed been doing it for far longer than the purity law.

He recalls the legal battle as being very emotional, not least because he and his father, Helmut, had bought the brewery in the former communist East Germany, close to the Polish border, following the fall of the Berlin Wall, and hoped to bring new jobs and enterprise to the region as they built up the business. But the battle we ended up fighting nearly sank us, just because we refused to fit in with the norm, Fritsche says.

Small brewers like Fritsche, who produces 35,000 hectolitres (6m pints) a year, and a growing number of craft beer producers who are keen for more freedom to be able to experiment with different ingredients such as fruits and spices, say the purity law stifles creativity and innovation. Fritsche cites a recent scandal over traces of the herbicide glyphosate that were found in many different German beers, as well as the lack of restrictions on using genetically modified ingredients, to suggest it is far from pure.

But the majority of German breweries who brew according to the regulations argue that they are central to the reason German beer has such a towering reputation around the world.

Anyone who believes that the Reinheitsgebot serves to limit creativity and gives rise to monotonous beers merely has to look to the immense diversity of the countrys beer, which is the envy of the world, says Marc-Oliver Huhnholz, of the German Brewers Federation. Germanys brewers never stop trying to develop new beer styles from the ingredients stipulated in the purity law, proving that the potential involving those four ingredients has still not been fully realised.

He points out that the Reinheitsgebot continues to enjoy an extremely high degree of acceptance, with a recent survey finding that 85 per cent of German consumers saying that it should continue to be upheld.

So theres absolutely no incentive for German brewers to let a 500-year-old decree fade into the past, Huhnholz adds. It has perpetually provided brewers with the impetus to breathe new life into Germanys beer culture.

Traditionalists who argue that experimentation with the permitted ingredients offers scope enough for innovation point to the current trend to search for new hop and yeast varieties there are about 200 of each which all help to add new twists to established beers.

Craft beers broadly speaking, those not brewed by large corporations but by small, independent brewers constitute, at 100,000 hectolitres or 0.1 percent, a tiny proportion of the German beer market, though they are increasingly making their presence felt.

When the independent Scottish craft beer maker BrewDog opens a 200-seater bar and beer garden in central Berlin later this year, under the German rules they will not be allowed to brew in Germany. They will have to import, and even then will not be allowed to call their beer beer.

The Neuzelle brewery produces 6m pints of beer a year. Photograph: Christian Jungeblodt for the Guardian

We have to call it beer-style or refer to it specifically as an IPA, pale ale or stout, says Kerry Allison, the companys Germany representative and brand ambassador. Nevertheless, she senses the beginnings of a beer revolution and says BrewDog hopes to contribute to it, not least by showcasing a wide variety of German craft beers.

We dont see the Reinheitsgebot as our issue to debate, being lucky enough to come from a country which doesnt restrict us, she says. But we do think its an issue that needs to be spoken about loudly, and were looking forward to supporting other breweries in their fight for a relaxation of the rules. Theres a lot of tension over this issue as it really removes the creative licence and perpetuates a market of very similar beers. At the end of the day, its in everyones interest just to be producing excellent beers.

Huhnholz argues that German brewing methods have changed immeasurably over the centuries, as have food safety standards. The likelihood of falling victim to an irresponsible brewer who might once have spiked your beer with deadly nightshade has faded, but that doesnt mean that the Reinheitsgebot should be considered a relic of the past, he says. The indisputable fact is that over the years it has endured as a natural product, free of artificial flavours, enzymes or preservatives.

Meik Forell, a beer market specialist with the Hamburg consulting firm Forell & Tebroke, says the law is often wrongly perceived as the gospel truth. It is frequently referred to as the worlds oldest food safety standard when in fact it is first and foremost a protectionist measure reaching back to the middle ages. He points out that it was not until the 1990s that imported beer was allowed to be sold in Germany. The fact is as long as the Reinheitsgebot is retained, it makes life difficult for foreign brewers in Germany, he says, but much of the innovation is coming from outside, so its high time German brewers woke from their fairytale slumber or else theyre going to find their market share shrinking even more. He insists tha while the majority of Germans might be in favour of keeping the purity law, few people really understand what it means.

Meanwhile, the Fritsche family of Klosterbrauerei Neuzelle continues to test the boundaries with a range of beers that seem purposely intended to stir the wrath of purists, from bathing, apple, cherry and anti-ageing beers, to one made out of distilled Bavarian hay.

Stefan Fritsche checks the temperature of a vat of fermenting hops. Photograph: Christian Jungeblodt for the Guardian

They ended up taking their battle to the highest constitutional court where a judge ruled an exception should be made to their Black Abbot, a decision that was widely interpreted as a softening of the purity law.

Still their battles with the authorities continue to this day over everything from what constitutes a beer to the size and style of type faces on its labels.

Standing over an open fermenting vat full of a golden brown froth and checking its temperature gauge, Stefan Fritsche recalls how, in the midst of the row, just when he thought it could not get any more absurd, he was contacted by the finance ministry.

They ordered a crate of Black Abbot, and then got in touch to say despite what the agriculture ministry said, as it tasted like beer to them it was beer, and we had to make sure we continued to pay our beer taxes, he says. Of course, we were delighted to do so.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/10/16/medieval-beer-purity-law-has-germanys-craft-brewers-over-a-barrel/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/10/16/medieval-beer-purity-law-has-germanys-craft-brewers-over-a-barrel/