AWWA JAW64695

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: draft voluntary consensus guidelines addressing the physical security of both water and wastewater systems were released in December, having been developed jointly over the past three years by AWWA, the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the Water Environment Federation, the downloadable guidelines detail key actions that each type of utility can take to protect its facility from intentional attacks, and cover the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of both new and existing systems of all sizes; some 4,000 community and nontransient-noncommunity water systems will have to conduct a year's worth of monitoring for up to 25 unregulated contaminants under a final rule published January 4 to implement U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (USEPA) second round of unregulated contaminant monitoring; requirements in USEPA's final Long-Term 2 Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule (LT2ESWTR) for unfiltered systems to treat source waters for Cryptosporidium and to cover finished water reservoirs or treat their effluent for crypto are illegal and should be vacated, argued Portland, Oregon, officials in a brief filed in December with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia; desalination of seawater and brackish water and rainwater harvesting are among the strategies being pursued as the state of Texas plans to locate the additional 8.8 mil acre-ft of water it will need annually by the year 2060, according to a comprehensive state plan issued in November 2006; USEPA recently finalized plans to partner with states and some Native American tribes to conduct a first-ever nationwide survey of the quality and ecological and recreational condition of more than 900 lakes and reservoirs; a federal court ruled that three South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) pump stations which backpump polluted drainage waters into Lake Okeechobee for flood control and water supply purposes will require Clean Water Act (CWA) discharge permits; states that implement the CWA discharge permit program would get extra federal funds for other CWA activities if they recover certain percentages of permit program costs from user fees, under a rule proposed in December 2006 by USEPA; under legislation that reached the White House in December, the Bureau of Reclamation received its requested administrative structure for reviewing, approving, and constructing rural water projects, and establishes a formal process for authorizing and funding rural projects that for decades have been separately approved by Congress on a project-by-project basis with little input by the bureau; AWWA has developed resources intended to help water utilities understand USEPA's rulemaking effort to determine whether to regulate discharges of treatment residuals under the CWA; and, a new USEPA specification for high-efficiency toilets that promises to save billions of gallons of water annually has been developed under the agency's nascent WaterSense program to promote water-efficient technologies, the specification is for toilets that use less than 1.3 gpf, including single- and dual-flush tank units and flushometer and electrohydraulic types.