Three individuals recommended by NACWA recently joined EPA’s Environmental Finance Advisory Board (EFAB). Tony Parrott, Executive Director of the Metropolitan Sewer District of Louisville, Kentucky and a NACWA Board Member, and Dan Kaplan, Financial Services Manager of King County, Washington, were appointed to the Board as part of the state and local government category.

NACWA participated in the most recent Infrastructure Working Group discussion on December 1, which was led by the Associated General Contractors (AGC) and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM).

NACWA participated in the third annual Jersey Water Works Conference, held in Newark, NJ on December 1.

Registration is now open for NACWA’S 2018 Winter Conference—February 6 – 9, in Napa, CA— which will address some of the most profound issues confronting the clean water sector as utilities continue to deal with increasingly complex regulatory challenges and more stringent standards.

Unlike many waterbodies in the United States, the Great Lakes pose unique opportunities and challenges. On one hand, its miles of coastline and open water provide a boon for economic activity and recreation. However, the challenges, such as addressing water quality concerns, are multi-faceted and require the coordination between numerous states, not to mention Canada.

Cooperative federalism became a recurring theme among the many critical legal issues addressed at the 2017 National Clean Water Law Seminar and National Water Enforcement Workshop last week in Savannah, GA, which drew clean water professionals from around the country.

NACWA provided oral comments November 14, during an EPA listening session on the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rulemaking. EPA is moving quickly with a two-step rulemaking process to first withdraw the 2015 Clean Water Rule and reinstate the regulatory regime that was in place prior to that rule; and second, to develop a new WOTUS definition.

NACWA joined with several other water sector organizations this week in a letter to Congressional Appropriators reiterating several important funding asks for the federal Fiscal Year 2018 (FY18) budget.

NACWA and 25 other partners joined a brief filed by the City of New York in an appeal pending in the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, involving a basement backup that allegedly resulted in wastewater seeping into groundwater and then migrating into the Long Island Sound.

NACWA met with senior officials from EPA’s Office of Policy on Nov. 20 to discuss the Association’s comments on the Agency’s regulatory reform initiative.

NACWA participated in a roundtable discussion on November 14, led by Congressional Members of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus Infrastructure Taskforce, on ways to modernize and meet the nation’s critical infrastructure needs.