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As NACWA members gear up for the Association’s Summer Conference & 43rd Annual Meeting, Managing & Financing the Resilient Clean Water Utility, July 14-17, in Cincinnati, Ohio, this Member Update provides committee summaries from the Association’s 2013 National Environmental Policy Forum in April that can serve as the building blocks for the Summer Conference’s strategic discussions. NACWA’s committee structure forms the backbone of its advocacy efforts and the Association strongly encourages member agency participation. Committee handouts and presentations from the Policy Forum are available here.
To join NACWA committees, please contact Kelly Brocato at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Registration and a preliminary agenda are now available, so make your plans to join us in Cincinnati! The Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza is offering a room rate of $160 per night (single/double), plus applicable taxes. Reservations must be made by Friday, June 21, 2013, to receive the special rate. To ensure a hotel room, contact the Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza at 513.421.9100. Be sure to identify yourself as a NACWA attendee.

Joint Facility & Collection Systems and Stormwater Management Committee Meeting

• Facility & Collection Systems Co-Chair, Ben Horenstein, East Bay Municipal Utility District, Calif.
• Facility & Collection Systems Co-Chair, Dax Blake, City of Columbus Department of Public Utilities, Ohio
• Stormwater Management Chair, Kyle Dreyfuss-Wells, Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, Ohio
• Stormwater Management Vice Chair, Jill E. Piatt Kemper, City of Aurora Water Department, Colo.

NACWA’s Joint Facility & Collection Systems and Stormwater Management Committee meeting addressed a number of municipal stormwater utility topics, affordability, and recent court decisions affecting peak excess flow blending. The Stormwater Committee portion of the meeting began with a presentation from Connie Bosma, Branch Chief of the Municipal Branch in EPA’s Office of Wastewater Management, on the possible elements of the upcoming post-construction stormwater rule that is due for public comment in June 2013. Bosma also presented on the complex cost/benefit analysis being undertaken as part of the rule’s development. A copy of the presentation can be found on NACWA’s website. At the conclusion of the presentation, Connie and her team fielded a number of member questions on rule implications.

A brief update was then provided by NACWA staff on the status of various proposed “flow TMDLs” for stormwater. Though many of these TMDLS have been vacated or withdrawn, the committee and staff will continue to monitor possible flow-surrogates being proposed in other parts of the country, such as the Pacific Northwest.

The next topic of the meeting was financial capability and whether NACWA should advocate for EPA’s 1997 affordability guidance to be completely overhauled, or if it is better to work with the existing guidance. As NACWA completes its Targeted Action Fund (TAF) project to develop a white paper on financial capability assessments considering the EPA’s Integrated Planning Framework, these views will be taken into consideration.

Finally, the recent decision by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals on blending and its implications for utilities was discussed. The court ruled that EPA cannot prohibit parallel treatment processes at wastewater treatment plants and can only regulate effluent at the point of discharge. Committee members discussed how the bypass regulation relates to this decision and strategies for permits to best manage peak wet weather flows.

Joint Legislative & Regulatory Policy and Legal Affairs Committee Meeting

• Legislative & Regulatory Policy Chair, Charles Logue, Renewable Water Resources, South Carolina
• Legislative Vice Chair, Sharon Green, Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County, Calif.
• Regulatory Vice Chair, Elizabeth Toot-Levy, Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, Ohio
• Legal Affairs Chair, Lisa Hollander, Sanitation District No. 1, Ky.
• Legal Affairs Vice Chair, Hilary Meltzer, NYC Department of Law, N.Y.

The joint meeting of the Legislative & Regulatory Policy and Legal Affairs Committees began with an update on recent developments on Capitol Hill and the courts regarding wet weather. Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) in the Senate and Representatives Daniel Lipinski (D-IL) and Randy Hultgren (R-IL) in the House of Representatives have respectively introduced S. 571 and H.R. 1185, The Great Lakes Water Protection Act, a bill to restrict bypasses, prohibit blending, and asses penalties where discharges exceed effluent limits from wastewater treatment facilities into the Great Lakes. The bills are similar to measures introduced in the past and NACWA is planning meetings to provide NACWA’s perspective on the proposals.

In the courts, a recent decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has called into question EPA’s current position on the regulatory status of blending. Following a presentation by NACWA Legal Affiliate Hall & Associates on the decision, Committee members discussed the implications of the case for the clean water community and for NACWA’s wet weather legislation. NACWA staff provided updates on the Association’s integrated planning workshops as well as its activities on the Hill to secure funding for integrated planning pilots, which is attracting bi-partisan support in both the House and Senate, including support from the Chair and Ranking Member of the House Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee.

NACWA staff also provided updates on a number of funding issues, including the steep cuts proposed to the Clean Water State Revolving Fund in the President’s Fiscal Year 2014 budget and the proposed benefit cap on tax-exempt municipal bond interest for high income taxpayers. On the biosolids front, NACWA Legal Affiliate Beveridge & Diamond provided an overview of two recent legal victories from California and Pennsylvania that reaffirmed legal protections for land application of biosolids. Although both cases were heard in state courts, they contain valuable language that can be helpful to other clean water utilities in defending the legal and environmental elements of land application programs. NACWA staff wrapped up the meeting up with an overview of the next steps on the Water Resources Utility of the Future effort. Handouts and related documents from the committee meeting are available on NACWA’s website.

Water Quality Committee Meeting

• Chair, Barbara Biggs, Metro Wastewater Reclamation District, Colo.
• Vice Chair, James Pletl, Hampton Roads Sanitation District, Va.

The Water Quality Committee meeting began with a discussion of the latest developments on nutrients. NACWA staff provided an overview of the Association’s letter to EPA on the issue of translating narrative nutrient criteria into numeric permit limits. Most of the activity on this front is in Region 1 and NACWA’s letter outlined its concerns with developments in that part of the country as well as EPA’s continued efforts to press states nationwide to follow suit. EPA is planning training for state permit writers on the use of narratives and NACWA will continue to pressure EPA to allow for broader stakeholder review of any guidance or training it provides to states. Members of the Committee provided updates on the latest developments out of Florida, Ohio and Iowa and the Committee was briefed on NACWA’s ongoing involvement in litigation over EPA’s denial of a petition to develop numeric nutrient criteria for the Mississippi River Basin states. The Committee also discussed an EPA document outlining barriers to numeric nutrient development and later learned from EPA that a final work plan document to address those barriers will be released in the next month or so.

On the water quality criteria front, the Committee learned that EPA will release the final ammonia criteria revision within the next month or so. The criteria will be accompanied by two or three guidance documents to assist utilities and states with implementation. NACWA will be briefed by EPA before the criteria are released. NACWA has recently engaged in issues surrounding fish consumption rates and the impact these rates have on human health water quality criteria. NACWA has been following developments in Oregon and Washington and most recently in Florida and will be tracking this issue in the coming months. Susan Kirsch from the Association of Clean Water Agencies (ACWA) provided an overview of ACWA’s work with EPA on a new vision for the total maximum daily load (TMDL) program now that EPA and the states are out from under the bulk of the court ordered deadlines that drove the program in its early years. The Committee meeting concluded with updates on the Farm Bill and NACWA’s efforts on water quality trading, including participation in a lawsuit challenging the use of trading in the Chesapeake Bay TMDL. Handouts and related documents from the committee meeting are available on NACWA’s website.