May 22, 2019 Alan Roberson Drinking Water Headlines
For those that sometimes find the multiple acronyms such as CCL, UCMR, NPDWR, etc., a tad confusing when looking at the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) regulatory development process, ASDWA has released a two-pager on the SDWA regulatory development process as a resource for the broader drinking water community. Of course, other resources, such as EPA’s SDWA website, can provide more detailed information for those that want to dive into the details of each step of the process, but this summary provides a quick overview of the steps that EPA must go through in developing a new drinking water regulation, as well as reviewing all of the existing regulations.
May 22, 2019 Deirdre Mason AWOP, Data Management, Drinking Water Headlines, Meetings and Conferences, Security, Small Systems, Source Water
ASDWA is accepting abstracts for the 2019 Annual Conference being held on October 28 – 31, 2019 in Tampa, Florida. You are invited to join state, Federal, and local water professionals who will gather at the Association of State Drinking Water Administrator’s 34th Annual Conference to tackle the many challenges facing the water community. By contributing your knowledge and vision to the conference’s program you can help us achieve our goal of protecting public health as we face an array of 21st century challenges.
Please submit your abstract for ASDWA’s 34th Annual Conference. We will give priority to abstracts received from state drinking water program administrators or their staff and from those who partner with state programs.
Instructions for Submissions:
May 20, 2019 Anthony DeRosa Drinking Water Headlines, Regulatory
EPA is hosting several webinars and webinar series over the course of 2019 for issues around lead in drinking water:
Lead Service Line Identification and Replacement Quarterly Webinar Series
The EPA Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water is hosting a series of quarterly webinars highlighting challenges and successes in lead service line identification and replacement. The webinar series will showcase how states and public water systems have successfully identified lead service lines and shared that information with the public to raise awareness about the presence of lead service lines in their communities. The series will also focus on the challenges faced by states and public water systems and how they addressed those challenges.
Webinar #2 – Focus on State Programs
Thursday, June 6, 2019 2:00 – 3:30 pm ET
Featuring:
Registration link: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/4598494474741816833
Webinar #3 – Lead Service Line Identification and Replacement Webinar Series Focus on Large Public Water Systems
September 5th; 2:00PM-3:30PM
Register for this event
Webinar #4 – Lead Service Line Identification and Replacement Webinar Series Focus on Large Public Water Systems
December 5th; 2:00PM-3:00PM
Register for this event
For more information on this series, including registration for future webinars and past webinar recordings, please visit https://www.epa.gov/dwreginfo/lead-service-line-identification-and-replacement-webinar
Lead and Copper Rule 101 Webinar Series
EPA’s Office of Water is hosting a 3-part webinar series discussing the Lead and Copper Rule. These webinars will examine requirements before and after an action level exceedance, as well as compliance determination and reporting requirements. Attendees will have an opportunity to ask questions and hear from EPA’s Lead and Copper Rule writers and managers.
May 22nd; 2:30PM-4:00PM
Register for this event
May 29th; 2:30PM-4:00PM
Register for this event
June 5th; 2:30PM-4:00PM
Register for this event
Additional EPA webinars in lead in water scheduled for 2019:
June 26th; 2:30PM-4:00PM
Register for this event
September 19th; 2:30PM-4:00PM
Register for this event
May 20, 2019 Anthony DeRosa SDWIS Prime cmdp, dse, maintenance
The Compliance Monitoring Data Portal (CMDP) Data Synchronization Engine (DSE)’s security certification is set to expire on 5/24/19.
All primacy agency DSE installations are required to update the SSL certificate by that time. Instructions can be found in the CMDP Help Center article on DSE Certificates Setup For Web Services Access.
If you have any questions regarding this update, please contact the CMDP Help Center (https://cmdp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us).
May 20, 2019 Alan Roberson Drinking Water Headlines
Today (5/20), the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators (ASDWA) and the Association of Clean Water Administrators (ACWA) jointly released a Recommendations Report developed by a joint ASDWA/ACWA Workgroup with several recommendations to be evaluated by federal and state agencies to address the growing issues surrounding contaminants of emerging concern (CECs). As states and EPA continue to respond to emerging contaminants, like per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and/or harmful algal blooms (HABs), ASDWA and ACWA set out to identify the tools state water managers have to respond to this challenging situation. The Workgroup of clean water and drinking water resource managers from across the country discussed and developed recommendations to improve the management of CECs.
The Workgroup developed recommendations across five action areas:
May 16, 2019 Alan Roberson Drinking Water Headlines
On Wednesday, May 15, EPA released a draft study on produced water from oil and gas extraction, and is seeking public comment on the draft by July 1st. This draft study takes a holistic look at how the agency, states, tribes, and others view the current state of regulation and management of wastewater from the oil and gas industry and provides insight into how this wastewater might be returned to beneficial use in the water cycle.
In May 2018, EPA announced the initiation of a Study of Oil and Gas Extraction Wastewater Management. The agency conducted a robust outreach effort to gather input from state, tribal, industrial, academic, environmental, public health and other entities for the study. This included meeting with individual entities, accepting written input through a public docket on regulations.gov, and hosting a national public meeting in October 2018 to report on what EPA had learned to date and to provide stakeholders an additional opportunity to provide input. The draft study summarizes what EPA heard and the public comments received from this outreach.
Comments should be submitted by July 1st to oil-and-gas-study@epa.gov. EPA is particularly interested in public input on the following questions:
The study does not announce or discuss any regulatory efforts regarding oil and gas extraction wastewater. The information in the study and associated public statements will help EPA determine of any future actions are appropriate to further address oil and gas extraction wastewater. EPA anticipates finalizing the study and announcing any next steps later in 2019.
May 15, 2019 Alan Roberson Drinking Water Headlines
On May 10th, EPA posted the third set of analytical results and a Data Summary for the Fourth Unregulated Contaminant Rule (UCMR 4). Under the rule, all large public water systems (PWSs) and a representative subset of small PWSs are required to monitor for four quarters for up to 30 contaminants (metals, cyanotoxins, pesticides, brominated disinfection byproducts, alcohols, and semi-volatile organic chemicals) between 2018 and 2020. The national summary is for the data received as of 5/1/19. EPA will continue to update the information on UCMR’s occurrence webpage approximately quarterly. The data are subject to change until a final dataset is published in early 2022.
The results for manganese monitoring has probably been the biggest surprise in the UCMR4 monitoring. According to this latest summary, 39 systems in 22 states have had sample results greater than the reference concentration of 300 ug/L (a 10-day health advisory for infants). The resultant actions that water systems have been strongly recommended to take have been a little unexpected for some of the water systems, as the health advisory is being treated the same as an enforceable Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL). Pierre, the capitol of South Dakota, is a recent example of water system that had to issue a “Do Not Drink” order based on the results of the UCMR4 monitoring, which is separate from traditional MCL compliance monitoring.
May 15, 2019 Wendi Wilkes Drinking Water Headlines, Legislative
The House Appropriations Committee’s draft Interior-Environment spending bill, scheduled for subcommittee markup May 15, increases EPA funding in the year 2020 to a total of $9.52 billion in funding for the agency — $672 million over FY19 enacted levels and $3.42 billion over the Trump administration’s FY20 budget request.
According to a summary released by House Democrats, the bill includes:
The draft bill also includes a $45 million dollar appropriation for WIFIA, as well as funding for provisions under the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act and America’s Water Infrastructure Act.
May 15, 2019 Alan Roberson Drinking Water Headlines
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has scheduled a Public Health Ground Rounds on Legionnaires’ Disease (LD) on May 21st from 1-2 PM EDT. CDC is a leader for LD prevention with the development of water management plans, and several useful resources for facility managers, water systems and the general public can be found on the CDC website. Below is more information on the Public Health Ground Rounds on May 21st.
CDC Public Health Grand Rounds
Turning the Tide: Preventing Legionnaires’ Disease
Tuesday, May 21, 1pm – 2pm ET
Reports of Legionnaires’ disease (LD) cases and outbreaks are increasing in the United States. LD is a serious lung infection caused by breathing in small water droplets containing Legionella. Outbreaks are commonly associated with buildings or structures that have complex water systems, such as hotels and resorts, long-term care facilities, hospitals, and cruise ships.
LD is preventable with effective water management programs. This session of Public Health Grand Rounds will discuss preventive approaches for federal, state, and local authorities along with an innovative water management program toolkit and online training program.
Learn more about Public Health Grand Rounds at https://www.cdc.gov/grand-rounds/.
Watch the live webcast on CDC’s Facebook page, May 21 at 1pm ET.
May 14, 2019 Darrell Osterhoudt AWOP, Drinking Water Headlines, Regulatory
ASDWA has just completed a four part webinar series on controlling Disinfection By Products (DBPs) through optimization of treatment and distribution system operation. The recordings for all the webinars in the series are available now on ASDWA’s webinar recordings web page. The presentation slides are also included with the recordings. These webinars contain valuable tools for both states and water systems trying to lower DBPs.
Violations of Disinfection By Products requirements are a significant percentage of health based drinking water violations nationally. ASDWA believes that the Area Wide Optimization Program (AWOP) operated by EPA in cooperation with ASDWA in over 25 states offers positive solutions for water systems trying to reduce DBPs. We worked with EPA’s Technical Support Center for them to share their expertise and the experience of the participating AWOP states with all states to equip them to combat DBP problems in water systems. The webinars cover overall approaches to controlling DBPs and specific strategies that can be used in treatment plants and distribution systems. EPA trainers were joined by AWOP participants in Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky and Pennsylvania.
For more information on drinking water optimization and the Area Wide Optimization Program, see ASDWA’s AWOP web page and EPA’s optimization web page.
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