Congress announced this week it is delaying its return to Washington DC until at least May 4 due to continued social distancing efforts around the COVID-19 outbreak.

NACWA joined with the California Association of Sanitation Agencies (CASA) in filing an amicus brief earlier this week with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) in support of Member Agency the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission’s Petition for Review of a Clean Water Act (CWA) National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit issued by EPA Region 9.

EPA published a notice in the Federal Register on April 10 seeking public comment on the WaterSense Program and requesting information on any data, surveys, or studies to help assess consumer satisfaction with WaterSense labeled products.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) recently issued two memos – one on March 31 and one on April 13 – outlining its policy to temporarily suspend certain affirmative civil debt collection and enforcement activities, including those related to environmental consent decrees and settlement agreements, through May 31, 2020 to “mitigate the financial impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.”

In a final rule published in the Federal Register on April 15, EPA is finalizing a suite of changes to the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) eRule to be consistent with current municipal separate storm sewer system (MS4s) permit requirements.

The vision of NEW Water, the brand of the Green Bay Metropolitan Sewerage District, is “Protecting our most valuable resource, water.” The utility’s commitment to that vision is demonstrated through two initiatives that also help advance NEW Water as a Water Resources Utility of the Future. First, the Resource Recovery and Electrical Energy (R2E2) project was the catalyst for a transformation in mindset at NEW Water by treating the materials it receives from its customers as resources to be recovered and reused rather than wastes to be disposed.