AWWA Sustainable Water Management Conference Held this Week

AWWA held its 2022 Sustainable Water Management Conference this week in Denver with about 200 in-person participants. Representatives from many water utilities across the country, consulting firms, as well as three states and ASDWA staff attended. The conference had three session tracks on: 1) Protecting Water at the Source; 2) Adaptation and Resilience; and 3) Water Resources Planning and Management; as well as jointly located pipeline condition assessment seminar.

Ann Castle, from the University of Colorado and former Assistant Secretary for Water and Science at the U.S. Department of Interior, provided the keynote presentation at the conference about the longstanding drought that has decreased the amount of water in the Colorado River reservoirs to their lowest levels. She highlighted that this extreme water shortage is pressing political support and leadership to go beyond the existing River Compact to ensure that Arizona, California, and Nevada do not run out of water.

During the conference, ASDWA and Clean Water Action (CWA) hosted a session with the Colorado Drinking Water and Clean Water Program staff on Holistic Approaches to Protect Drinking Water Sources From PFAS. The session speakers were Deirdre White of ASDWA, Jennifer Peters of CWA, and David Dani and Meg Parish from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, who provided presentations on state drinking water PFAS actions, Clean Water Act and other regulatory tools to protect drinking water sources from PFAS, and Colorado’s efforts to monitor for PFAS and address wastewater and stormwater discharges upstream of drinking water utilities.

The conference also featured presentations about wildfires in Oregon and Colorado, wildfire prevention and forestry management, as well as creative partnerships and funding for forestry and agricultural source water protection projects, climate adaptation, water loss, and more! For more information, visit the conference website.