The Rotary Club of Pleasanton reached out to Nigeria to financially help with constructing four toilets at the Amator Secondary School in Abia State. The school has approximately 350 students and 15 staff with no toilet facilities available.

The Pleasanton club partnered with the Rotary Club of Eziama-Sunrise with their club donating $2,000 and the Pleasanton club donating $8,000. The project began in May 2021 and will be completed today.

This school did not have toilet facilities like most schools in Abia State. Open defecation has been a common practice and poses a lot of health challenges to staff, students and community members. Fecal, sanitation and hygiene related diseases are common in their community which means increasing absenteeism of staff and students.

There are also the challenges associated to menstrual cycles for female staff and students. The school learning environment was threatened due to offensive odors and other forms of air pollution. These factors were the basis for this project.

According to the Water and Sanitation and Hygiene Projects Committee (WASH), there are 2.5 billion people in the world who lack access to improved sanitation. There are 1,400 children who die daily from diseases caused by lack of sanitation and unsafe water.

The Rotary Club of Pleasanton is proud to be a part of the WASH Rotary Action Group, which will continue to partner with international Rotary Clubs to bring safe drinking water, toilets and proper hygiene education to areas that need their help.

-- Nancy Harrington

Zoning, water, the homeless and Newsom

Gov. Gavin Newsom signs multiple bills into law that allows property owners to build as many as three units on parcels currently zoned single-family. Soon after, the number of housing permit applications in Los Angeles alone went up 2,000%.

Los Angeles gets a large portion of their water from the Sierra Nevada via the Eastern Sierra's aqueducts and the San Joaquin Valley via the State Water Project.

March 2019: The 51-mile-long canal in Los Angeles drained trillions of gallons of rainwater to the ocean. None was captured and little went into groundwater.

2021: Newsom orders an emergency drought proclamation to 50 of the 58 counties. Los Angeles was not one of them.

East Bay Times, Aug. 15, 2021: East Bay Municipal Utility District files suit against the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors after their approval to extend Danville's boundary lines to allow construction of 125 homes, stating there is not enough water to supply the homes.

In Marc Reisner's 1986 book "Cadillac Desert: The American West And Its Disappearing Water," the author calculated California would run out of water in the next 40 to 50 years. Sadly Marc passed away in 2000 at the age of 51. Considering Newsom's zoning change and California's population growth, that calculated time needs to be readdressed.

The New York Times, November 2019: "Do homeless move to politically liberal areas thinking they will receive more assistance?" California has a greater homeless population than our 22 neighboring states combined.

Recall Gavin Newsom.

-- Marty Daniels

Not our problem

Oakland's homeless problem is not Alameda County outlying cities' problem. There is an effort by Alameda County Supervisor Haubert and Oakland Vice Mayor Kaplan to move Oakland's homeless encampments to Pleasanton and other outlying cities in Alameda County.

The Oakland homeless problem is owned by the city of Oakland and the Democratic leadership that governs Oakland. That leadership has the sole responsibility to resolve their homeless problem. Not move it out to other nearby cities.

Fires in Oakland homeless encampments have tripled over the last two years from one fire a day to three fires a day. On a single day in March, there were nine separate fires in homeless encampments. Many of those homeless encampment fires spread to and involve businesses and private residential homes.

Oakland City Auditor Courtney Ruby stated that homeless encampments have cost the city of Oakland $12.5 million, much of it unbudgeted. With that money having been spent, the homeless problem in Oakland remains unresolved due to gross mismanagement by the Democratic leadership of Oakland. They are throwing in the towel and want the outlying cities in the county to take over Oakland's homeless problem.

Supervisor Haubert and Vice Mayor Kaplan keep your homeless problem in Oakland, deal with it, you own it. Attempting to force this problem onto other cities due to your botched, blundering leadership speaks to your ineptness.

-- Michael Austin

Blood on their hands

Two weeks in Afghanistan, Biden, Blinken, Austin and Milley had blood on their hands as they were directly responsible for the debacle in Kabul where 13 U.S. service personal and hundreds of Afghan citizens were slaughtered by terrorists.

Biden and his staff's execution of the exit strategy was totally botched. Rather than accept responsibility for his mistakes, Biden continues to try to blame the Trump administration. Considering that Biden has canceled countless executive orders and plans from the previous administration, his passing of the responsibility is not only sheer stupidity it is downright deplorable.

The social media companies, Google, Twitter and Facebook and their executives, as well as the left-biased news media, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, NY Times and Washington Post, also have blood on their hands for covering up the facts during the 2020 election which allowed Biden to get elected.

With a real leader in the White House, none of these tragic events would have taken place. The left social and print media got Biden elected and now we are all suffering.

The Trump administration would have never botched the exit strategy and would have protected the American and Afghan citizens as well as the U.S. service personal on the ground in Afghanistan.

My heart breaks for the families of the 13 U.S. service personal and the Afghan citizens. Blood is on Biden's hands and his administration and the left-leaning media companies that can never be washed off.

-- David Ott