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ACWA, its leadership, and members will be have a prom-
inent presence at WEFTEC’13 – co-hosting sessions, en-
gaging in focus groups, and providing invaluable infor-
mation and perspectives from the municipal clean water
community.
Significant EPA Presence at Hot Topics Breakfast
The Association will again collaborate Water Environment
Federation (WEF) to convene the
Utility Leaders Morning
on
Tuesday, October 8. The morning’s events
include the annual
Hot Topics Breakfast
from
8:00 - 9:45 am. The U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency’s (EPA) Acting Assistant
Administrator for Water, Nancy Stoner;
Andrew Sawyers, Director of the Agency’s
Office of Wastewater Management (OWM);
Jeff Lape, Deputy Director for the Office
of Science & Technology; Deborah Nagle,
Director of OWM’s Water Permits Division;
Loren Denton, Chief of the Office of
Enforcement & Compliance Assurance’s (OECA) Municipal
Enforcement Branch and John Dombrowski, Director of OECA’s
Enforcement Targeting & Data Division will be on hand along with
other key Agency staff to discuss issues including integrated plan-
ning, nutrients, and water quality standards, to name a few. There
is no fee for the
Hot Topics Breakfast
, but
is requested.
A
Utility Executives Forum
, from 10:00 am-12:00 noon, follows the
Hot Topics Breakfast
and will feature Kimo Kippen, Chief Learning
Officer, Hilton Worldwide. Kippen will keynote the
Forum
describ-
ing how Hilton Worldwide reinvented itself and how utilities can
learn from this global organization.
Collaboration is Key
NACWA will also collaborate with WEF, and the Water
Environment Research Foundation (WERF) on several events, in-
cluding a utility focus group that will discuss
and identify the attributes and skills needed
for the workforce of the future. NACWA lead-
ership will join leaders from other water sec-
tor associations for a WEF-hosted discussion
and exploration of enhanced collaboration
to provide added value to members – as well
as a meeting with the Chief Executive of the
Singapore Utilities Board, Chew Men Leong.
Additionally, the Association’s Executive
Director, Ken Kirk, will receive WEF’s
Honorary
Membership Award
and NACWA staff members will speak at ses-
sions throughout WEFTEC’13. NACWA’s collaboration with WEF
and WERF won’t end with WEFTEC’13 – the organizations will
again join forces April 7-9 in Washington, DC for the
National Water
Policy Forum & Fly-In
, the seminal event of
Water Week 2104
.
NACWA – Active & Engaged at WEFTEC’13
2
W
hile most estimates of the impacts of the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) revised
are merely educated guesses, ev-
eryone agrees that the impacts will be widespread
and significant among the clean water community. More treatment
plants will be required to remove ammonia, with only those plants
with very high dilution allowances and low background levels likely
to remain unregulated. Those plants currently treating to remove
ammonia may need significant upgrades to meet permit limits
based on the revised criteria, and removal of ammonia to the lower
levels that will be required will be particularly problematic during
the colder winter months. Recognizing these potential impacts,
NACWA has been actively engaged since EPA began its efforts to
revise the criteria back in 2004, meeting with EPA on several occa-
sions, providing comments and scientific information, and partici-
pating in peer review efforts. One of NACWA’s top concerns was en-
suring that the clean water community and state permit writers had
sufficient guidance on implementing the criteria. The Association’s
concerns regarding implementation were reinforced by officials in
EPA’s Office of Wastewater Management and the release of the cri-
teria revisions was delayed in order to complete several implementa-
tion guidance documents.
New Criteria Significantly More Stringent
The revised ammonia criteria were released in final form on
August 22. Based on ammonia’s impacts on freshwater mussels
and snails, the new criteria values are significantly more stringent
than the existing criteria. When EPA published its draft criteria
revisions for ammonia in 2009, the Agency proposed using a bi-
furcated approach, with different criteria values for waters where
mussels were present and absent. Subsequent to 2009, however,
the Agency reviewed additional studies confirming that gill-
breathing snails were similarly sensitive to ammonia. In finalizing
the criteria, EPA included only one acute and one chronic value (ex-
pressed as an equation that is dependent on temperature and pH),
which will apply to all waters regardless of what aquatic species are
present. Though EPA eliminated the dual criteria approach, the
Agency does provide guidance and information to facilitate the de-
velopment of site-specific criteria using a recalculation procedure
to better account for the organisms that reside at a particular site.
Implementation Flexibilities Cited in
Guidance Documents
Consistent with NACWA’s recommendation, EPA published
several supporting guidance documents, along with the criteria
New EPA Ammonia Criteria to Impact Utilities Nationwide
