This bimonthly roundup features highlights of the hottest news stories of recent months as reported in WaterWeek, AWWA's weekly newsletter to member utilities. Topics covered include: the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) issued its first-ever 10-year Filtration
Avoidance Determination (FAD) on July 30, 2007, to New York City, allowing it to continue
providing unfiltered water from the city's Catskill/Delaware watershed; after enduring daily fines for delays in constructing its Croton Water Filtration Plant, the
New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) recently reported that it has
finalized a contract with Sweden-based Skanska Corporation for $1.3 billion, the largest single
construction contract in city history; to date, DEP has paid $5.5 million in fines to the state
and federal governments for failure to meet various deadlines set for building a filtration plant
agreed to in 1998 that would improve water quality for the 1 million city residents who rely
on supplies from the Croton Watershed; asked by USEPA to recommend ways to improve sustainable water infrastructure, the
National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and Technology (NACEPT) has
identified lack of understanding and use of the watershed approach to water resource
management as a major opportunity for USEPA, and while commending the agency for numerous activities it is already doing to support this
concept, NACEPT recommended that USEPA create a position for a "sustainable
watershed coordinator" and charge that position with aligning all agency activities and
interaction with other federal agencies, and communicate the
"urgency" of adopting a watershed approach to sustainable water infrastructure; USEPA's annual accounting of the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF)
shows that dollars for the federal/state infrastructure funding partnership were higher than
ever in 2006 after a dip in 2005, nearing $13 billion in its 10th year; the Association of State and Interstate Water Pollution Control Administrators (ASIWPCA), a national organization that represents state water pollution control agencies, has called
on Congress to write specific language to prohibit USEPA from making Clean Water Act
(CWA) Section 106 set-asides; efforts by US water suppliers to stop Congress from exempting concentrated animal
feeding operations (CAFOs) from cleanup liabilities under Superfund legislation continued
during a Sept. 6, 2007, hearing by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public
Works; Ontario's Ministry of the Environment reports it has implemented all 121 of the
recommendations made to avoid a repeat of the May 2000 tragedy in Walkerton, a small
town northwest of Toronto where contaminated drinking water killed seven people and
sickened 2,300; California has adopted a drinking water standard for perchlorate of 6
µg/L, equal to the public health goal that was set in large part to protect fetuses of women
with hypothyroidism or iodide deficiencies; a final study released by the USEPA concludes that a "combination of
factors" caused elevated
lead levels in the water
delivered to District of
Columbia Water and Sewer Authority (DCWASA) customers several years ago, and that treatment changes starting in the mid-1990s at the US
Army Corps of Engineers Washington Aqueduct facility led to the release of lead from
lead service pipes throughout WASA's distribution system; and, Southern Florida
Water Management District (SFWMD) has honored a US District Court order not to
pump phosphate-laden canal water into Lake Okeechobee until it obtains a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination Standards (NPDES)
permit for the transfer.
| Edition : | Vol. 99 - No. 11 |
| File Size : | 1
file
, 100 KB |
| Note : | This product is unavailable in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus |
| Number of Pages : | 12 |
| Published : | 11/01/2007 |
