AWWA JAW64040

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: a proposed water transfer rule that would specifically exclude transfers of surface waters not subject to intervening industrial, municipal, or commercial use from Clean Water Act (CWA) Section 402 National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permitting requirements; a federal appeals court ruling affirming its earlier holding that CWA discharge permitting requirements apply to a New York City water transfer casts doubt on US Environmental Protection Agency's (USEPA) case for excluding such transfers from point-source permitting; states and water systems subject to the Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) would have to implement seven targeted improvements in monitoring, public education, and lead service line (LSL) replacement requirements under a proposed rule signed by USEPA on July 6 that aims to correct deficiencies identified under the agency's national review of implementation problems since the 15-year-old rule was last revised in 2000; USEPA this summer released numerous guidance documents to help water systems comply with several rules, including the recently adopted Stage 2 Disinfectants/ Disinfection Byproducts Rule (D/DBPR) and Long-Term 2 Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule (LT2ESWTR); efforts to advocate benefits of conserving water got a big boost with USEPA's June 12 launch of WaterSense, a voluntary public-private partnership to promote water-saving products, services, and practices, and follows the establishment of the Chicago-based Alliance for Water Efficiency (AWE), a nonprofit organization devoted to promoting water efficiency; several million Americans could be experiencing episodes of gastrointestinal illness from microbial contaminants in public drinking water supplies each year, according to a collection of research reports that comprise a congressionally mandated national estimate of endemic waterborne disease occurrence in the United States, and represent the work of more than 30 authors from USEPA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and elsewhere, and were published in a special issue of the Journal of Water and Health from the International Water Association include two that make estimates using two different approaches; and, as USEPA nears promulgation of a rule aiming to reduce health risks associated with consumption of public supplies of groundwater, research to estimate the risk of pediatric illness linked to groundwater is gearing up in 14 Wisconsin communities, and a team of researchers, supported by a $1.8 million grant from USEPA, is being led by Mark Borchardt from the Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation and will conduct a randomized intervention trial that will assess occurrence among children of fevers and gastrointestinal illness in communities that use chlorinated or unchlorinated groundwater.