In a typical year, Lynchburg Water Resources (LWR) education and outreach staff visits schools, leads field trips, hosts water plant and wastewater plant tours, and participates in large-scale events. Due to COVID-19, these events were no longer safe to continue. As a solution to continue to raise awareness, the education and outreach staff began filming a series of short 3-5-minute-long videos entitled “Water Wonders.”

I was recently flattered to be selected from all the strong female leaders in WSSC Water to represent the organization in the Women in Water (WIW) Roundtable Group, a six-month virtual program offered through NACWA and Core Consulting’s Core Leadership collaboration. The program is oriented towards mid-level professionals, but anyone from inspiring leaders to executive staff can...

The Executive Highlights and raw data from NACWA’s 2020 Financial Survey are now available for download on NACWA’s website. The Survey’s results reflect input from 109 public agencies, collectively serving more than 74 million people, with more than $159 billion in total asset and over $20 billion in 2019 revenues.

Congressional work on infrastructure continued this week as several U.S. House committees marked up and passed their respective jurisdictional bills related to the “Reconciliation” package as the Democrat Majority looks to further build on the investments that were included in the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

EPA announced its Preliminary Effluent Guidelines Program Plan 15 in the September 14 Federal Register. The Plan is published every two years to outline EPA’s planned studies and rulemakings related to effluent limitation guidelines (ELGs) and pretreatment standards for industrial dischargers. The Plan, an FAQ, and other documents are available on EPA’s website.

If you haven’t yet registered for EPA Finance Center’s upcoming Funding Stormwater Operations and Maintenance webinar, NACWA encourages you to consider sitting in on this event.

The debate over investing in infrastructure continues to advance in the U.S. Congress. Majority leadership in both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate are working feverishly to draft a “Reconciliation” package that could be advanced alongside the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment And Jobs Act, which passed the Senate last month and is scheduled for a House vote by Sept. 27th.

NACWA is proud to release its 2020-2021 Annual Report, which documents the accomplishments and milestones the membership accomplished together over the past 12 months and outlines our vision for the year ahead. The electronic version is available on the NACWA website, and the print version is now being delivered to all member agencies, along with Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 member invoices.

EPA, in collaboration with the Department of Defense (DoD), announced a new analytical method—Method 1633—to test for PFAS in various environmental media on September 2. This single-laboratory validation method can test for 40 PFAS compounds in wastewater, surface water, groundwater, soil, biosolids, sediment, landfill leachate, and fish tissue using liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS).

As we head into the fall, the debate over investing in infrastructure continues to advance in the U.S. Congress. Majority leadership in both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate are working feverishly to draft “Reconciliation” packages that could be advanced alongside the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment And Jobs Act, which passed the Senate last month and is scheduled for a House vote by Sept. 27th.

NACWA joined Association members the Louisville/Jefferson County Metropolitan Sewer District and the City of New York, as well as the California Association of Sanitation Agencies (CASA), in filing an amicus brief this week in support of NACWA member the City and County of San Francisco’s challenge to their first post-long term control plan (LTCP) National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit.

NACWA joined a broad coalition this week on a letter to Congress requesting support for municipal bonds as part of infrastructure investment, especially in the context of the upcoming budget reconciliation process. The letter notes the importance of municipal bonds in funding infrastructure projects around the country.

NACWA’s thoughts are with all of our members and other utilities that have been impacted by Hurricane Ida. The Association stands ready to provide any assistance it can to utilities that need help.

The National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA) is pleased to provide you with the July/August 2021 Regulatory Update.

South Platte Renew (SPR) is a resource recovery facility that serves approximately 300,000 customers in the South Denver region and treats an average of 18 million gallons per day.

Speaker of the House Pelosi (D-CA) and a group of ten moderate Democrats reached a deal August 24 to move forward on two of their key legislative priorities: the Infrastructure Investment And Jobs Act (i.e. the Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill with $550 billion in new spending) and the $3.5 trillion Budget Resolution.

EPA’s Water Permits Division, as part of renewing the information collection request (ICR) for the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) program, is considering making minor revisions to the forms and instructions of permit applications.

The Northwest Environmental Advocates (NWEA) recently filed a petition for a writ of mandamus to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit asking the court to force EPA to respond to its February 2017 petition requesting that the Agency revoke the State of Washington’s authority to issue permits pursuant to the Clean Water Act’s (CWA) National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) program.

EPA is sponsoring a series of free virtual workshops on water sector cybersecurity. These offerings are timely given that recent cyber-attacks on water and wastewater systems have manipulated treatment processes, disabled process control and business enterprise systems, and stolen proprietary data.

I recently had the opportunity to participate in “Core Growth for Emerging Leaders: Building Water’s Future Leaders,” a training program under NACWA and Core Consulting Group’s recently formed Core Leadership offering. The program is based on a regional cohort model of 15-20 participants from several utilities in the same region coming together to form a class.