August 20, 2019 Kevin Letterly Drinking Water Headlines
EPA’s Office of Water has recently issued a policy for managing draft documents (click here). EPA and the Office of Water use guidance documents to support regulatory programs and provide recommendations for monitoring and sampling protocols. The Agency, to increase transparency, has issued a new policy for managing draft documents that have not been finalized in an appropriate amount of time to reduce confusion. Draft documents that have been issued more than two years ago and not been finalized are now rescinded. Draft documents recently issued, and issued in the future, must be finalized within two years of the draft date, or they will automatically be rescinded.
Existing draft guidance or policy documents that are important to the Office of Water’s national programs will need to be reissued and finalized in reasonable time in accordance with this new policy. The Office of Water intends to establish a website database with the complete collection of guidance and policy documents that are currently effective. New draft and final guidance documents will be uploaded to this database within 30 days of issuance.
August 20, 2019 Kevin Letterly Drinking Water Headlines
Yesterday, the journal JAMA Pedriatrics published “Association Between Maternal Fluoride Exposure During Pregnancy and IQ Scores in Offspring in Canada,” a study that links higher levels of fluoride exposure to lower IQ scores. The study, which has not been released without criticism, measured the maternal urinary fluoride and self-reported maternal daily fluoride intake of around 600 pregnant women in six Canadian cities. About 40% of the sample population lived in cities with fluoridated drinking water and had an average maternal urinary fluoride level of 0.69 mg/L, which was contrasted with the 0.40 mg/L of the sample population that did not live in cities with fluoridated water.
Three to four years after the women gave birth, the researchers assessed the children’s IQ using the Wechsler Primary and Preschool Scale of Intelligence-III. The study concluded that higher levels of fluoride exposure during pregnancy were associated with lower IQ scores in children measured at age three to four years.
August 19, 2019 Anthony DeRosa SDWIS Prime
EPA has posted three new post-conference materials from the 2019 Data Management Users Conference to the SDWIS User Community of ASDWA.org:
These new documents have been added to the existing summary materials from the 2019 DMUC. To request access to ASDWA’s SDWIS User Community, please contact Anthony DeRosa of ASDWA.
August 19, 2019 Kevin Letterly AWOP
EPA has recently updated its AWOP website with multiple new materials. These new materials include the Generating High-Quality Turbidity Data in Drinking Water Treatment Plants to Support System Optimization and Monitoring, which is a document that describes the common turbidimeter setups and associated Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems used in drinking water treatment plants and identifies “best practices” approaches to help ensure data quality.
A DBP optimization webpage has also been added. This webpage includes several study protocols and links to the ASDWA DBP webinar series. The studies include the Distribution System Influent Hold Study and the Tank Assessment, as well as the supporting spreadsheets.
August 16, 2019 Deirdre Mason Source Water
The Ground Water Protection Council is holding a half day Source Water Protection (SWP) Workshop on the afternoon of Monday, September 16th, in conjunction with the Ground Water Protection Counil (GWPC) Annual Forum in Oklahoma City. The dates for the full GWPC Annual Forum are September 15-17.
The primary audience for the SWP workshop is state and EPA Regional source water protection coordinators and key partners from throughout the US. The workshop agenda will focus on sharing state successes, lessons learned, and experiences in working with USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and other partners, updating source water assessments, promoting source water protection plans, developing statewide source water protection strategies, and discussing and developing actionable next steps for participants to take home. For questions about the Workshop agenda, please contact Sylvia Malm at smalm@gwpc.org. Register for the Forum and Workshop here.
In addition, the Ground Water Research & Education Foundation is offering a limited number of scholarships for state agency employees to attend the full GWPC Annual Forum, if you would like to submit an application, GO HERE.
August 16, 2019 Deirdre Mason Drinking Water Headlines
The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) has released a report entitled, “2018 PFAS Sampling of Drinking Water Supplies in Michigan.” The primary objective for this state-wide PFAS sampling program was to proactively sample CWS, schools, daycares, and tribal locations that utilize groundwater and/or surface water as their sources for drinking water to verify these supplies are protective of the populations they serve. The report includes information about EGLE’s 2018 drinking water sampling approach, results, and findings, along with tables and maps of the PFAS detections throughout the state. As presented in the results section, over 89% of the sampled facilities were reported as non-detect for PFAS. However, due to the use of PFAS in so many commercial products and industries, PFAS were detected in just over 10% of various sampled facilities, and two of the sampled facilities were reported with concentrations above the USEPA Lifetime Health Advisory of 70 ng/L for PFOA and PFOS.
The report also includes information about the 2019 Phase 2 Statewide PFAS Sampling Program that has been initiated approximately 590 additional locations to further evaluate the potential of PFAS impacts in additional locations such as adult foster care providers, children camps, various industries, medical care facilities, offices, motels, and parks. For more information and to read the report, visit the Michigan PFAS Response website.
August 16, 2019 Alan Roberson Drinking Water Headlines
On Tuesday, August 27, from 2-3 PM EDT, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is hosting a webinar on its “2019 Emergency Water Supply Planning Guide for Hospitals and Healthcare Facilities“. During an emergency, ensuring that these facilities have an adequate water supply to remain functional is critical and the Guide provides a step-by-step process for developing an emergency water supply plan. Detailed information on the webinar can be found below.
FoodSHIELD and Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) Webinar
Tuesday, August 27, 2019
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM ET
If you are dialing into the meeting, conference line 1.866.687.4175
Attendee passcode: 6210397
To join the meeting, go to https://foodshield.connectsolutions.com/r316gbhxon1/
Type in your full name and log in as guest user, even if you have a FoodSHIELD account
Dear Partners and Colleagues,
Please save the date for the next joint FoodSHIELD and WASH webinar on Tuesday, August 27, 2019, from 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM ET. The agenda will include presentations on real life examples of the role of public health in emergency water supply planning, and an introduction to the 2019 Emergency Water Supply Planning Guide (EWSP) to help healthcare facilities prepare for, respond to, and recover from a water supply interruption: Division of Foodborne, Waterborne, and Environmental Diseases (DFWED).
You will receive an e-mail one week before the webinar with additional call-in information and a detailed agenda. This webinar will be recorded and made available at a later date for those who are unable to attend.
How to access the FTP site to download meeting files (will be available the morning of the webinar):
1. Go to your web browser (e.g., Internet Explorer, Safari) or your Microsoft Explorer browser (i.e. the same browser you open in Microsoft to navigate to files, C drive etc.)
2. In the top address box, type: ftp://ftp.cdc.gov/pub/media/statehealth
3. Press Enter
4. Download the PDFs that begin with the numbers 1-3. These are the webinar presentations.
5. Once you have copied the files to your hard drive, you can close out of the browser.
August 14, 2019 Wendi Wilkes Drinking Water Headlines
Today, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) released a report new report on Legionella, Managing Legionella in Water Systems. The report is a result of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. 
Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation asking NASEM to address the state of the science with regard to Legionella.
The comprehensive report reviews the following:
Some of the highlights from the report’s conclusions and recommendations include:
August 13, 2019 Alan Roberson Drinking Water Headlines
Continued lead issues in Newark the past few days prompted another round of media stories that even reached the network news on Monday evening. Over the weekend, testing results showed that two out of the three homes using filters showed continuously high lead levels, and these testing results led to the distribution of bottled water on Monday. The situation is a little unusual, in that the filters are certified and are used on a semi-regular basis across the country, especially when lead service lines are replaced.
The high lead levels are likely from lead services lines in the distribution system. For Newark, the estimate to replace all of the lead service lines is $70 million. The situation in Newark will likely take some time to sort out.
In the meantime, EPA’s Long-Term Revisions to the Lead and Copper Rule (LT-LCR) are still under review by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Given the normal 90-day review, the timeframe to complete that review would be September 6th.
August 9, 2019 Anthony DeRosa SDWIS Prime DMUC19
SDWIS Community – due to scheduling conflicts between ASDWA and the EPA SDWIS Team, we will be posting all DMUC-related follow-up materials (Q&As, request documents, polling responses, etc.) early next week. ASDWA and EPA had previously committed to releasing all follow-up items within a two-week timeframe, so we wanted to inform the community of this slight delay. This is to ensure less spam to you, and a more coordinated packaging of all follow-up materials.
As a reminder, all videos and slide decks from the Conference are available on the ASDWA website in the SDWIS User Community [requires login].
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