Clean Water Current

(February 6, 2020) – NACWA’s Board of Directors met February 4 in Atlanta, Georgia at the start of NACWA’s 2020 Winter Conference.

Since last fall, work has been underway to develop a new Strategic Plan for the Association and the Board provided feedback to staff on the most recent draft of the new plan during its meeting. With input from the Board, staff will now work with the Executive Committee to make any final revisions before presenting the new Strategic Plan for adoption at the Board’s meeting in April during Water Week 2020.

The Board also considered and approved three Targeted Action Fund (TAF) requests:

• $30,000 from the FY 2020 TAF to continue efforts to build a diverse coalition of stakeholders to advance the concept of a federal low-income water customer assistance program.
• An amount not to exceed $35,000 from the FY 2020 TAF to provide a critical national perspective in the San Francisco Public Utility Commission’s appeal before the Environmental Appeals Board of its Clean Water Act permit. At issue is the permit’s inclusion of generic, unspecified water quality-based effluent limitations; additional required combined sewer overflow controls which lack specified water quality violations attributed to ongoing overflows; and regulation of isolated sewer overflows that do not reach jurisdictional waters, which could have implications for NACWA members across the country.
• Up to $20,000 from the FY 2020 TAF to join the Association of Missouri Cleanwater Agencies as an intervenor in the Missouri for the Environment Foundation’s challenge of EPA’s approval of Missouri’s newly adopted combined criteria approach for nutrients in lakes – an approach that NACWA has long supported in concept for its use of both causal and response variables to confirm that nutrients are having an impact on the designated use.

The TAF is funded each year using a portion of NACWA member dues and provides NACWA with critical funding to support a wide array of technical, policy, and legal initiatives.

The NACWA Board also acted to approve the Association’s FY 2019 draft audited financial statements, draft Financial Plan for FY 2021 – FY 2025, and discussed NACWA’s ongoing advocacy on affordability and PFAS.

If members have any questions, please contact NACWA’s Deputy CEO, Chris Hornback.