Out of many, one people. 

Kimisha Simpson says she’s confident that Jamaica’s national motto will rally the diaspora and others to help rebuild the island that was battered by Hurricane Melissa earlier this week. 

“We like to say, ‘We’re the heartbeat of the Caribbean,’” Simpson said. “Jamaica is an island that has given so much to the world — entertainment, the arts, the culture, the food, the tourism, the hospitality. And so knowing the devastation is unlike anything they’ve ever seen in centuries, it’s definitely time for the world to give back to Jamaica.”

After Hurricane Melissa hammered Jamaica as a Category 5 storm, bringing 185 mph winds on Tuesday afternoon, it brought life-threatening storm surge and floods to Cuba and Haiti. It later turned towards the Bahamas and headed to Bermuda.  

The storm, one of the most powerful ever recorded in the Atlantic, left Jamaica reeling before weakening slightly as it crossed warm Caribbean waters toward its next target. 

In its wake, dozens have died amid widespread destruction across Cuba, Haiti, and Jamaica. More than two dozen people died in Jamaica and Haiti as of Thursday. The exact death toll will become clearer in coming days once aid workers are able to reach more remote and damaged areas.

Simpson is the founder and CEO of Ignite Jamaica Fund, a nonprofit based in Philadelphia that does educational advocacy work on the island. Ever since the hurricane touched down there, she’s been reaching out to friends and family in Manchester, a parish in the western region. She said she wanted to “get updates beyond the media and hearing from them what they were experiencing.” 

As the storm pummeled Jamaica, it brought the strongest hurricane wind speed to make landfall in 90 years. With it came catastrophic floods, landslides, and a sea surge up to 13 feet along the island’s southern coast. The storm knocked out power and telecommunications for much of the country, with internet connectivity dropping to about 30% of normal levels by Tuesday night, according to NetBlocks, which monitors global outages.

Power lines, roads, and bridges were damaged across the island, and more than half a million people were left without electricity.

“The change in its trajectory really took the island by surprise,” said Simpson, who was a former principal and teacher. “When we heard about the landfall earlier this week, and we started to get the videos, the updates from those on the ground, we were really devastated, and the community across the diaspora, right away, started to galvanize, mobilize, and have calls about just how can we start to gather resources. Even before we knew what the outcome was going to be, we just saw it unfolding before us.”

The island is home to about 2.8 million people, about 90% of whom are Black. The diaspora of Jamaica — or the Jamaicans who have left and their descendants who live in the U.S. and all over the world — is estimated to be over 2 million people.

Daryl Vaz, Jamaica’s science, energy, telecommunications and transport minister, told Sky News that initial reports from the hardest-hit western parishes were “catastrophic.” In Saint Elizabeth Parish, where Melissa made landfall, floodwaters and flying debris destroyed homes and farms in what officials described as a “complete disaster.”

“There are entire communities that seem to be marooned and also areas that have been flattened,” said Dana Dixon, Jamaica’s minister of education, skills, youth and information, on Thursday. “We are trying to get to the areas that have been marooned. We will get there … We are going to get to every single Jamaican and give them support.”

In Kingston and other eastern areas, where the eye of the storm did not pass directly overhead, damage was less severe. Still, critical infrastructure remained compromised. Most rural hospitals lost power, and major airports in Montego Bay and Kingston remained closed. 

Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness has declared a national disaster. At least three people died before Melissa’s arrival, with local officials warning that more fatalities could be confirmed once communication resumes with rural areas. 

The storm’s intensity, fueled by unusually warm Caribbean waters, has underscored the growing climate threat to small island nations with fragile infrastructure. This is the fourth storm in the Atlantic this year to undergo rapid intensification of its wind speed and power, a feat made twice as likely because of climate change, according to studies. 

Melissa made landfall early Wednesday in eastern Cuba as a Category 3 storm with sustained winds near 120 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel warned residents late Tuesday of a “very difficult night,” urging them to stay sheltered. Officials said roughly 750,000 people were evacuated.

Melissa likely caused $7.7 billion of damage in Jamaica alone, according to catastrophe modeler Enki Research. But across the entire Northern Caribbean, recovery will be difficult. 

Recovery challenges ahead  

“We have this saying in Jamaica: one coco, full basket,” Simpson said. “It’s a proverb that means that all small efforts will compound over time and make a large impact. So no donation, monetary or supplies are too small. Anything that you’re willing to give can make an impact in a difference.”

Simpson and other organizers said it is going to take time to rebuild from devastation that is unlike something Jamaicans have seen in centuries.

Aid experts fear that Jamaica and Cuba could face severe public health challenges in the days ahead — contaminated water, collapsed medical facilities, disease outbreaks, and growing mental health crises. The United Nations has warned that budget cuts and reduced global aid donations are expected to limit the amount of food and emergency support agencies like the World Food Program can provide this year. 

Much of Jamaica’s southern coast, its agricultural “breadbasket,” remains underwater after more than 2 feet of rain. 

In the area, which got its nickname because it is where most of the island’s food is grown, farmers were just recovering in areas like St. Elizabeth. Last year’s Hurricane Beryl damaged crops in June. And then came Hurricane Melissa.

This time is different. There was a direct hit.

“All the crops, I’m sure, are gone,” said Karen Shields, who lives in Westgate Hills in Montego Bay.

Shields is the island liaison for the Jamaicans Abroad Helping Jamaicans at Home (also known as JAHJAH) Foundation. As the director of operations, she helps coordinate aid to the island.

“The farmers are just getting back on foot,” she said. “And so it’s, I know it’s gonna take a very long time. But we have to see what we can do, just, you know, to make quick fixes and reach those low-hanging fruits to help to do what we can in the interim.”

The day after Melissa came ashore, the 48-year-old Shields said she and her family were wondering what they would eat for breakfast. There was no electricity and most means of communication are down on the island, so she and others cannot contact loved ones.

On Wednesday, a neighbor came to her gate with breadfruit from a tree. Her family roasted the starchy staple.

“We are very kind to each other. We help each other,” Shields said. “Like people have their disagreements, but I’m telling you, when it comes to times like this, we stand together as one, we are united as one.”

In Cuba, the storm threatens power grids already pushed to the brink by years of shortages and blackouts intensified by a United States-backed blockade against the country.

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the U.S. is “prepared to move” to help Jamaica and neighboring countries recover. The State Department announced Wednesday that it had activated U.S.-based Urban Search and Rescue teams to assist Caribbean nations in Melissa’s path. 

However, typically, foreign disaster aid comes in the form of USAID, which the Trump administration disbanded earlier this year. Jamaica lost $22 million in funding through those cuts. Additionally, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development projects that rich countries, including the U.S. and most of Europe, will reduce foreign disaster and recovery aid by around 15% this year.

Government officials across the region continue to warn that no Caribbean nation is truly prepared for a hurricane this powerful — or for the accelerating climate chaos fueling such storms.

Trevor Dixon, an emergency physician based in New York, is the founder and CEO of the JAHJAH Foundation. His organization focuses on health care and education advocacy, and he said he and others are already planning to head to the island as soon as they can to help.

Dixon said his organization provided aid during the last hurricane. “So once we got the call that Hurricane Melissa was coming, I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, we’re gonna have to do this again,’ he said. “Hurricane Beryl was just a dress rehearsal for a more dynamic and more devastating hurricane.”

Dixon, whose family’s house in Mandeville in Manchester Parish was devastated during the storm, said he plans to collect supplies in multiple locations in New York and New Jersey to fill two shipping containers to take “home.” 

About 4 million tourists visit Jamaica each year. 

“They have given a lot to the world,” Dixon said. “They’ve given music, they’ve given food, they’ve given sports, they’ve given to other governments. They’ve given to health care, they’ve given to education.

“It’s time that we give back to the people in Jamaica.”

How to Help Hurricane Victims 

The government of Jamaica has set up an official website for updates on the storm as well as  donations for emergency relief, housing reconstruction, and health care.

Relief agencies and others are beginning to set up some resources to help people impacted by the hurricane: 

The Jamaicans Abroad Helping Jamaicans at Home Foundation assists public hospitals and health centers in Jamaica that are in need.

Ignite Jamaica Fund is a nonprofit organization that works to enhance the education of children and youth in Jamaica and across the Diaspora.

Jamaican Americans For A Better Jamaica Inc. is a nonprofit organization that was founded with the mission of providing Jamaican Americans diverse and feasible opportunities to stay connected and give back to Jamaica. 

The American Friends of Jamaica Disaster Relief Fund provides “critical support when natural or humanitarian disasters impact communities across Jamaica.”

The International Medical Corps has deployed an emergency response team to provide critical supplies, medical workers, and support.

Mercy Chefs provides hot, chef-prepared meals and clean drinking water to people impacted by natural disasters and emergencies.

World Central Kitchen, a nonprofit founded by chef and humanitarian José Andrés, mobilizes after disaster strikes to provide food and water for first responders and victims in the affected areas.

Food For The Poor, the largest charitable organization in Jamaica, provides food, housing, clean water, and educational supplies to impoverished families.

The post Jamaican Americans Mobilize After the Island’s Worst Hurricane in a Century appeared first on Capital B News.

In the last decade, the U.S. electric power sector turned away from coal to embrace wind turbines and solar panels, two energy generating sources that require little water for operations and cooling.

Together with the installation of more water-efficient natural gas-fired power plants, the energy shift has been a net benefit for the country’s water resources – a “reduction in the relative risk that our power sector is facing due to water temperatures and water scarcity,” as Jordan Macknick of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory put it.

New considerations are now in the mix. Due to political changes and rising electricity demand to power the AI frenzy, the durability and continuation of that risk-reduction path is less certain for the electric power sector than it was a few years ago.

Energy-hungry data centers are being proposed and constructed at breakneck speed, kickstarting growth in U.S. electricity demand for the first time in nearly two decades.

Today, data centers account for 4 percent of the nation’s electricity use. By 2028, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, data center demand could soar, to between 6.7 and 12 percent of all the electrons consumed nationally.

At the same time, the difficulty in building new transmission lines and the Trump administration’s open hostility to wind and solar – going so far as to cancel the Revolution Wind project off the Massachusetts and Rhode Island coast that was 80 percent complete – is casting a pall over electricity-generating sources that consume little water yet are still seeing vigorous growth in the face of gathering political headwinds.

Data center energy demand, said Dan Reicher, a former assistant secretary of energy in the Clinton administration, is at a junction, one that points not only at the computing industry’s carbon intensity but also its energy-related water use.

Will water-intensive thermal generation like coal and nuclear be revived? The Trump administration ordered the J.H. Campbell coal plant in Michigan, slated for closure, to remain open. Will hydropower and geothermal – two renewable energy sources the Trump administration favors – see their fortunes rise? Will the data center buildout proceed as rapidly as some forecasts suggest?

These changes have the potential to rewrite the twinned narratives of energy and water.

“I think we’re at a very important inflection point right now with the composition of our electricity grid,” Macknick said. “If we do see a resurrection of coal plants or a push for more thermal technologies that utilize recirculating or once-through cooling technologies, we could see a reversal in that trend of water usage and see increases in the water intensity of our electricity sector, which could in turn potentially lead to more risks for our reliable electricity supply.”

Electric Growth

From Arizona and Georgia to New Jersey and Minnesota, data centers have been the target of public pushback due to the water used directly in their operations to cool racks of data-crunching, heat-producing servers. Supplying cooling water to these facilities has taxed water supply infrastructure and strained local water sources. Berkeley Lab estimated direct water consumption for data centers to be 66 billion liters nationally in 2023.

A second form of data center water use has received less attention – the water consumed to generate the electricity that powers these facilities. In aggregate, this indirect use is a much higher number – some 800 billion liters, according to Berkeley Lab.

For data centers, water and energy are two sides of a coin. As servers undertake more intensive computing processes to power generative AI, they produce more heat. In a circular system, that waste heat could be repurposed. But most data centers operating in the U.S. today do not reuse their heat. They instead dissipate it through cooling systems. This is where operators encounter trade-offs between water and energy.

The most energy-efficient means of evacuating waste heat from the server racks is through water. Where water is constrained, data centers can use recirculating systems or huge fans to cool their equipment. Conditioning the air, however, gobbles electricity. Along with the energy that powers the servers, how that energy for cooling is produced determines a data center’s indirect water footprint.

The U.S. electricity mix is not what it was a decade ago. During that transitional period, power generated by burning coal has dropped by more than half, now accounting for only 15 percent of the nation’s electricity. Coal, which needs water for cooling, has been supplanted by natural gas and renewables, particularly solar and wind.

Forecasts for data center energy growth vary, but the direction is the same: up and up. Western Resources Advocates, a research and advocacy group, says that the largest electric utilities in five Colorado River basin states are collectively forecasting annual demand growth of 4.5 percent through 2035.

Efficiency improvements have helped to lighten the load. The Big Tech hyperscalers – Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon – that operate the largest data centers tout their efforts to wring more performance out of less power. Google claims better processors allow the company to generate six times more computing power per unit of electricity compared to five years ago.

“Data centers are more efficient and getting more efficient by the day,” said Reicher, who was the director of climate and energy at Google from 2007 to 2011.

Despite the efficiency gains, the data center expansion, in aggregate, is so massive that total energy demands continue to climb. Berkeley Lab noted that data center electricity demand more than doubled between 2017 and 2023.

How to accommodate this buildout without stressing water supplies is a matter of serious inquiry. Macknick and his colleagues at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory are working to identify the best locations for data centers taking into account land, proximity to end users, and energy and water availability.

Reicher said the energy mix in the U.S. is changing because of new priorities in the Trump White House and the Republican-led Congress. How the political turn affects the energy market is an open question, Reicher said. But the administration’s actions – canceling offshore wind, limiting access to equipment, cutting federal funding, and imposing tariffs – are substantial barriers.

“There’s a whole circle of issues that are cutting into the deployment of solar and wind, not just the generating facilities themselves, but adjunct storage capacity, adjunct transmission capacity,” Reicher said. “So we’re really messing things up in a pretty serious way when it comes to this and therefore with all those implications upstream or downstream for water use.”

Macknick mentioned three strategies that data center operators are considering. One is rebooting shuttered fossil fuel and nuclear power stations. Microsoft signed a deal with Constellation Energy in 2024 to reopen Unit 1 at Three Mile Island nuclear plant, in Pennsylvania. Another is to build new natural gas plants. A third is to sign power purchase agreements for renewables. Last year Google signed contracts for 8,000 megawatts of clean energy.

“It’s hard to really parse out what are the trends that will in time be successful,” Macknick said. “I think right now all those options are simultaneously being considered and people are wanting to see what will work, what will be possible, given the large amount of uncertainty that all energy companies are currently facing right now.”

The post Data Center Energy Demand Is Putting Pressure on U.S. Water Supplies appeared first on Circle of Blue.

The State of New Jersey has pursued legal action against a farm owner for housing a deer in her barn.

William and Malya Levin had their first date in a coffee shop in Brooklyn. William opened the date with a fairly unique pickup line.

“William said to me, ‘I’m descended from the first successful Jewish farming community in America,’” Malya recalled. “And I was like, ‘marry me,’” she joked.

This line made such an impression in part because it was the first time Malya had encountered the history of American Jewish farming settlements. 

“I thought all Jews came to the Lower East Side and worked in factories like my family. I thought that was the story,” Malya told the Daily Yonder. 

But William’s ancestors followed a different path. They were part of a group of immigrants who arrived in southern New Jersey in 1882, and founded a farming community called Alliance. 

“It was a part of William’s heritage that he was proud of, but I think not something that we ever anticipated would become a present part of our life in the way that it has,” Malya said. 

Malya and William did end up getting married. And almost 150 years after Alliance was founded, the Levins have maintained ownership of eighty acres of land in Salem County, New Jersey, at the heart of the original colony. Though William’s family had been interested in selling the land, William and Malya decided to buy out their relatives in order to keep the property intact. In 2016, they incorporated a non-profit called Alliance Community Reboot, or ACRe.

“We thought maybe we could do something Jewish and creative, and revive the spirit of the agrarian Jewish community that once thrived in south New Jersey,” William said. “And it was a lot easier said than done.” 

The Levins are still living full-time in Brooklyn with their four children. Malya is a lawyer for the Weinberg Center for Elder Justice, an elder-abuse prevention program based in Brooklyn. William works in animation and entertainment. Neither had any experience with agriculture until they began purchasing farmland in 2014, so the past ten years have involved a lot of trial and error. 

One challenge is posed by the land itself: the farm is situated in New Jersey’s pine barrens, an area characterized by sandy, acidic soil that isn’t especially fertile. The Levins began by trying to transition the farm to organic techniques, but found that strategy wasn’t economically sustainable. Other experiments included farm-to-table relationships with restaurateurs in Philadelphia and investigating the possibility of growing marijuana and hemp.

It’s been a steep learning curve, but the Levins describe their ownership of the farm as “a new chapter in an old book.”

“It’s funny because I think when we started, we thought that ten years in it would all be established and done,” Malya said. 

“Now we actually have enough knowledge to get started,” William said. 

The History of Am Olam Settlements

In a sense, starting a farm without any prior knowledge or experience is itself a family tradition. 

Alliance was founded in 1882 by 43 Jewish families who had immigrated from what was then the Russian Empire, fleeing persecution and anti-Jewish violence. 

Because of laws that prevented Jews from owning any land, few, if any, of the original settlers had any farming experience. Instead, the immigrants were primarily merchants or scholars who were affiliated with Am Olam, an ideological movement that sought to create utopian Jewish farming communities in the New World. 

Am Olam settlers were aided by a number of Jewish philanthropists and aid societies, including the Baron de Hirsch Fund, the Alliance Israelite Universelle, and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. They aimed to create self-sustaining communities scattered through the United States, Canada, and even South America, according to Dr. Tom Kinsella, a professor of Literature at Stockton University and director of the Alliance Heritage Center. 

American proponents of these communities believed they could help reduce overcrowding in New York City and other immigration hubs, as well as hasten assimilation, wrote Violet and Orlando Goering in a paper published by the South Dakota State Historical Society.

The immigrants were themselves divided by a number of ideological issues, but were unified in the belief that a “return to the land” would symbolize “not only a means of livelihood, but the attainment of full manhood and citizenship,” according to the Goerings. 

Am Olam settlements were built in locations as varied as Sicily Island, Louisiana; New Odessa, Oregon; Cotopaxi, Colorado; and Cremieux, South Dakota.

But most settlements failed within a few years due to limited funds, lack of farming experience, ideological disputes among the settlers, and remote locations that made it difficult for the settlements to compete economically. 

The Alliance Colony fared better. The settlers learned to farm the sandy soil of the pine barrens with help from immigrant groups who arrived earlier, including Italians, Germans, and African Americans fleeing the South, according to Kinsella, the Stockton University professor. Industrialist Abraham Brotman founded a sewing factory near the colony to provide more job opportunities for settlers, especially in the winter months. And the settlers benefited enormously from the nearby train line that ran from Philadelphia to New York City, which made it possible to sell their produce in two major cities.

“It was fairly well thought out here,”  Kinsella said in an interview with the Daily Yonder. “Even if the ground wasn’t the most fertile, it was inexpensive. It was close to places where you could sell, and your children, once educated, could go to Philadelphia and New York City.” 

According to Kinsella, Alliance’s heyday was from 1900-1920, when the children of the first wave of immigrants continued the growth of the colony. In the 1940s, an influx of Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust joined the community, this time making a living as poultry farmers. 

Kinsella said the community began to decline after the 1950s. Today, few descendants of the original colonists remain in the area, though many attend reunions that celebrate important anniversaries of the colony. 

Still, a number of important historical and cultural sites remain, including a Jewish cemetery, a synagogue, and a chapel which will house a museum exhibition developed by Kinsella and his students.

Judaism’s Agrarian Roots

Today, the Levins are working to celebrate the history of the Alliance Colony through both cultural and agricultural projects. These include a mural that celebrates the history of the colony and a historic planting project that showcased crops planted by the original settlers, such as tobacco, berries, sweet potatoes and artichokes.

They’re now working towards building a small-batch kosher winery, and developing the site into a destination for Jewish agritourism. 

And though the Am Olam movement is long gone, its legacy lives on in other ways. The Levins were inspired to keep the farmland in their family after attending a harvest celebration called Sukkhafest, where they were introduced to other young, Jewish farmers.

Shani Mink is the co-founder and executive director of the Jewish Farmer Network, which connects more than 1,800 Jewish farmers across 40 states. One purpose of the network is to “break down feelings of alienation and isolation, and build community” among Jewish farmers, Mink said in an interview with the Daily Yonder. 

This is necessary because many Jewish farmers are defying stereotypes of both what American farmers are expected to look like, and what it means to be Jewish in the United States, according to Mink. The result is that Jewish farmers often feel isolated from both Jewish and farming communities.

“A lot of our farmers have been told, ‘Jewish farmer, isn’t that an oxymoron?” Mink said. 

According to Mink, this stereotype is born from antisemitic policies that prevented Jews from holding land, Nazi propaganda decrying Jewish ‘weakness,’ and thousands of years of displacement and persecution that made farming impractical, if not impossible, for Jewish families. 

The presence of modern-day Jewish farms, and the study of historical Jewish farming settlements, can help counter these narratives. And farming can also play an important spiritual role for modern Jews, according to Mink and the Levins.

“The Torah and most ancient Jewish texts speak in the language of an agrarian society,” Malya said. “The Jewish holidays center around agricultural milestones in the calendar. Legal principles are all elucidated through how an agrarian society would operate – like what if my ox goes into your yard?” 

Malya said that this can create a disconnect for modern Jews, who don’t see these principles as relevant to their daily lives. But she thinks farming on any scale can help people engage with the teachings of the Torah in a new way, while also tackling critical contemporary issues like food justice and environmentalism.

And for the Levin family specifically, the farm offers an important opportunity to connect directly with their family’s heritage.

“Being down at the farm and seeing our kids be in a place where they have six generations of history, I didn’t think that was possible for Jews in America,” Malya said. “It feels very powerful and special, and I think is a big part of their Jewish identity too now.”

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The post A Jewish Farming Legacy in South Jersey appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

Two lawmakers are floating the idea of slot machines, roulette, and blackjack tables at the Meadowlands and Monmouth Park.

More than 1,200 people participated in the rally and “card stunt.”

The star-spangled makeover of the Princeton Battlefield aims to turn the site into an outdoor classroom and living memorial.

For the past 13 months, streams of researchers from around the country have been locked out of the archive.