EPA’s Water Program Publishes 2012 Climate Change Progress Report

EPA’s National Water Program has published its “2012 Highlights of Progress: Responses to Climate Change.”  The report provides a summary of the major climate change-related accomplishments of EPA’s national and regional water programs in 2012. This is the fourth climate change progress report for the National Water Program and the first progress report organized around the five long-term programmatic vision areas described in the National Water Program 2012 Strategy: Response to Climate Change: water infrastructure; watersheds and wetlands; coastal and ocean waters; water quality; and working with Tribes. The National Water Program released the National Water Program 2012 Strategy: Response to Climate Change in December 2012 as an update to the initial climate change and water strategy released in 2008. The 2012 Strategy describes long-term goals for the management of sustainable water resources for future generations in light of climate change and is intended to be a road map to guide programmatic planning.

 

To view the report and learn more about climate change impacts on water resources, visit EPA’s web site HERE.

 

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WHEAT Consequence Analysis Tool Training Webinars Now Available

EPA’s Water Security Division has prepared a series of webinars on the updated (2.0) version of the Water Health & Economic Analysis Tool (WHEAT) for both drinking water and wastewater utilities.  The webinar series topics focus on the specific drinking water and wastewater modules of WHEAT.

WHEAT is a generalized (threat neutral) consequence analysis tool that can assist in quantifying human health and economic consequences for a variety of threat scenarios that pose a significant risk to the water sector.  WHEAT allows for the analysis of two types of scenarios for drinking water systems: 1) a hazardous gas release; and 2) the loss of operating assets. WHEAT helps utilities to better understand and quantify the public health and economic consequences of potential incidents.

WHEAT software for drinking water utilities is available free of charge on EPA’s website at   http://yosemite.epa.gov/ow/SReg.nsf/description/WHEAT.

See the attached calendar for webinar dates, topics, and descriptions. Click on the register button to enroll in each webinar.  If you need assistance, please contact WHEAThelp@epa.gov with questions or concerns.

Attachment — CALENDAR OF WHEAT TRAINING OFFERINGS

Source Water Collaborative Announces 2013 Pilot Programs in PA, WI and WY

As a part of its ongoing commitment to encourage state and local actions to protect sources of drinking water, the Source Water Collaborative (SWC) (which includes ASDWA) is pleased to announce its support of three new pilot programs including watershed-based, countywide and state-wide efforts.

In addition to strategic planning assistance and project support, the SWC’s extensive member network can help pilots access non-traditional or harder-to-reach partners. The selected pilots have a wide variety of partnerships and unique project champions, including drinking water utilities; county planning commission; USDA (NRCS, Forest Service); universities; state departments of environment, health services, and game/fish; state geological surveys; NGOs (Trout Unlimited, Nature Conservancy); associations representing watershed, rural water, livestock, and conservation interests; and EPA Regional Offices. The pilots are committed to: integrating and building collaboration between Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act programs to help protect public health and the environment; coordinating with agricultural stakeholders; and developing a summary of their source water protection efforts that can be used as a guide by other communities facing similar challenges.

The SWC 2013 Pilots are:

• Lancaster County, Pennsylvania — Led by the Lancaster County Planning Commission. Enhanced collaboration is a top strategic priority outlined in the Lancaster County Board of Commissioners’ recently adopted Blueprints: An Integrated Water Resources Plan for Lancaster County. Consistent with this plan, this pilot seeks to increase collaboration between water suppliers and key partners to implement best source water protection practices and outreach to stakeholders.

• State of Wisconsin (with Rock and Sauk Counties) — Led by Department of Natural Resources’ Bureau of Drinking Water and Groundwater. This project team seeks to develop a transferrable, collaborative response, with participation of partners and key stakeholders, to reduce the number of subwatersheds with drinking water sources approaching unsafe levels of nitrate.

• Sheridan, Wyoming (Big Goose Creek Watershed) — Led by the City of Sheridan & Sheridan Area Water Supply. This project team will work with partners to develop a watershed control plan to address Cryptosporidium, E. coli and sediment pollution, and design action plans that can be implemented to protect sources from future contamination.

For more information, visit the web site at:  www.sourcewatercollaborative.org.

Free Webinar on March 5th Featuring Last Year’s U.S. Water Prize Winners

The U.S. Water Alliance will feature the Salmon Falls Watershed Collaborative and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (two of the 2012 U.S. Water Prize Winners) in next week’s webinar, as part of its ongoing webinar series. The webinar is being held on Tuesday, March 5^th from 2:00pm to 3:00pm (eastern).  Following is a brief description of the webinar presentations.

Salmon Falls Watershed Collaborative:  Kira Jacobs and Dave Sharples will discuss the importance of inter-jurisdictional partnerships to protect and sustain drinking water supplies in the Salmon Falls River. They will explain how the success of the collaborative relies on the “on-the-ground actions” of multiple local watershed and community groups, municipalities, and landowners.

San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC):  Michael Carlin, SFPUC Deputy General Manager, will discuss the “one-water” approach – a method the SFPUC is taking to ensure that water is used multiple times by creating localized water cycles.

To register for this free webinar, go to:

http://www.uswateralliance.org/event/u-s-water-prize-winners-webinar-series/