Successful ASDWA Member Meeting Held This Week
Thanks to all our members and their staff, EPA colleagues, and partners who came to the ASDWA Member Meeting this week in Alexandria, VA. We had approximately 200 people attend the meeting, including 85 people from 43 state and territorial drinking water programs, 85 representatives from EPA headquarters offices and 11 from the EPA Regions, as well as many partners.
Ron Falco, ASDWA’s President from the Colorado Drinking Water Program provided a warm welcome to kick off the meeting. The first day included sessions with Past ASDWA Presidents and Executive Directors on the 40th anniversary of ASDWA, and with EPA and key players in the 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) Amendments to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Act. Speakers shared the successes of the SDWA, as well as key changes and considerations to the 1986 and 1996 amendments along the way, and the challenges still ahead. This session also included a short video montage of four of ASDWA’s previous presidents. To see the first in our series of SDWA50 videos, see the related news article.
Other meeting sessions topics included: the impacts of Congressional earmarks on state drinking water programs and State Revolving Fund (SRF) programs; Virginia’s workload and resource needs assessment to implement the upcoming final PFAS rule; the ASDWA and EPA Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA) Workgroup, cybersecurity, and implementation of the Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) Revisions and planning for the LCR Improvements. We also had great table discussions with states and EPA on many different drinking water topics.
We ended the meeting on Wednesday with states to hear about and provide input on ASDWA member services and initiatives, as well as challenges and ideas for addressing secondary and emerging contaminants and boil water notices. Thanks to all who attended. Your participation and engagement were essential for making it another successful meeting.
