Municipal Water Leader April 2016

April 2016 Volume 2 Issue 4

Good Business Sense, Exceptional Public Service: A Discussion With Eastern Municipal Water District’s Paul Jones

The Importance of Diversifying Water Supplies and Educating the Public

By Kris Polly

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n times of continued drought in the western United States, a diverse water supply portfolio not only makes sense, it is the best path forward for long-term success. Our interview with Mr. Paul Jones, general manager of the Eastern Municipal Water District (EMWD) reads like a how-to management guide for other municipal water providers on diversifying water supplies and conducting public outreach. EMWD’s overall business philosophy is especially important. “We approach our service as more than simply a water delivery and wastewater operation—we try to think of ourselves as an integrated resource management agency,” said Mr. Jones. This is a telling comment on the overall thinking of EMWD’s board of directors and leadership. It is an everything approach and a long-term view toward water delivery and wastewater management. From the installation of solar facilities at its treatment plants and offices and use of wastewater biogas toward energy independence to the development of brackish desalination and wastewater recycling, EMWD has a diverse portfolio of ongoing efforts to augment its energy and water supplies. The achieved 72 percent desalination efficiency and 100 percent wastewater reuse are

impressive accomplishments and have helped reduce EMWD’s reliance on imported water supplies from 80 to 50 percent. To help manage future needs, EMWD’s public outreach program focuses on its customers’ long-term water use efficiency. The district has worked closely with its county government to develop ordinances that discourage the use of nonfunctional turf in favor of more climate-appropriate landscaping.

Additionally, EMWD conducts a robust water use efficient educational program with approximately 600,000 grade school students annually. Another important educational effort is EMWD’s commitment to building and maintaining strong working relationships with its state and federal partners: the Bureau of Reclamation, the Army Corps of Engineers, and its congressional delegation. “We make a point to visit with them often to educate them about our projects and work together to solve any challenges that may arise,” said Mr. Jones.

Kris Polly is editor-in-chief of Municipal Water Leader and Irrigation Leader magazines. He is also president of Water Strategies LLC, a government relations, marketing, and publishing company he began in February 2009 for the purpose of representing and guiding water, power, and agricultural entities in their dealings with Congress, the Bureau of Reclamation, and other federal government agencies.

He may be contacted at Kris.Polly@waterstrategies.com.

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For more information, please contact Kris Polly at

(703) 517-3962 or Kris.Polly@waterstrategies.com 2

Municipal Water Leader

APRIL 2016

C O N T E N T S 2 The Importance of Diversifying Water Supplies and Educating the Public

VOLUME 2 ISSUE 4 Municipal Water Leader is published 10 times a year with combined issues for July/August and November/December by Water Strategies LLC 4 E Street SE, Washington, DC 20003 STAFF: Kris Polly, Editor-in-Chief John Crotty, Editor Valentina Valenta, Writer Robin Pursley, Graphic Designer Capital Copyediting LLC, Copyeditor SUBMISSIONS: Municipal Water Leader welcomes manuscript, photography, and art submissions. However, the right to edit or deny publishing submissions is reserved.

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Copyright 2016 Water Strategies LLC. Municipal Water Leader relies on the excellent contributions of a variety of natural resources and water industry professionals who provide content for the magazine. However, the views and opinions expressed by these contributors are solely those of the original contributor and do not necessarily represent or reflect the policies or positions of Municipal Water Leader, its editors, or Water Strategies LLC. The acceptance and use of advertisements in Municipal Water Leader do not constitute a representation or warranty by Water Strategies LLC or Municipal Water Leader magazine regarding the products, services, claims, or companies advertised.

Eastern Municipal Water District’s General Manager Paul Jones and his Executive Team at the district's purple pipe and solar facilities.

Municipal Water Leader

By Kris Polly

4 Good Business Sense, Exceptional Public Service: A Discussion With Eastern Municipal Water District’s Paul Jones

12 Clean Water Act Citizen Suits

By Chris Carr

18 A Lot of Ingredients in This Year’s WRDA

By Stephen Martinko, Jim Sartucci, and Sarah Beason

22 The Contributions of the Corps’

Planning Process: Reducing Hurricane and Flood Risks to the Nation

By G. Edward Dickey, PhD

8 2

Eastern Municipal Water District and General Electric Test Promising New Water Recovery and Brine Reduction System

30 Turning Water Challenges into

Opportunities in the Southeast: A Discussion With Atlanta Regional Commission’s Katherine Zitsch

34 Beyond Flint: A Conversation With

George Hawkins About Keeping Drinking Water Safe in the District of Columbia 3

Good Business Sense, Exceptional Public Service: A Discussion With Eastern Municipal Water District’s Paul Jones Paul D. Jones II was appointed general manager of Eastern Municipal Water District (EMWD) in July 2011 after having served as general manager of Irvine Ranch Water District (IRWD) for the previous 12 years. Mr. Jones has 32 years of professional experience in both the public and private sectors, with over 20 of those years working in the public sector.

With $2.4 billion in assets and an annual operating budget of $219 million, EMWD maintains an AA+ rating from the major rating agencies and has a five-year, $385 million capital improvement program.

EMWD is a full-service water, wastewater, and recycled water agency that serves 795,000 people in a 555-square-mile area. The district serves seven cities and unincorporated portions of Riverside County. Its service area includes both urban and agricultural areas. EMWD has a five‑member publicly elected board of directors. EMWD is one of 26 member agencies that procure water from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, a wholesale water provider that serves 19 million people throughout Southern California.

EMWD’s water supply portfolio is composed of various sources of water, including imported water from Metropolitan, which has two sources of supply: the Colorado River Aqueduct and the State Water Project, which transports water from the San Francisco Bay Delta estuary. The district’s imported water supply meets 50 percent of its demand. EMWD has groundwater wells in the eastern portion of the service area, which only require disinfection treatment and make up about 10 percent of its supply.

The other parts of the service area have abundant groundwater resources, but that water is brackish and is impaired with salts and nutrients. EMWD recognizes that brackish water is a significant resource and has constructed two brackish desalination treatment facilities that produce 5 percent of the service area’s supply. As EMWD experiences growth in the service area, it sees the brackish groundwater supply as a key component of serving future demands. Recycled water makes up about 35 percent of EMWD’s supply and is a key to meeting growth in the service area.

Mr. Jones has a bachelor of science degree in civil engineering with an emphasis in water resources from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He is a registered civil engineer in the state of California and is a member of the National Engineering Honor Society, Tau Beta Pi. Mr. Jones formerly served on the City of Tustin Planning Commission and as the president of the board of the Nature Reserve of Orange County, a nonprofit corporation established 4

to oversee a habitat reserve of over 37,000 acres. Mr. Jones is a past president of the California section of the WateReuse Association, currently serves on the board of the WateReuse Research Foundation, and is chairman of the Riverside County Water Task Force.

Mr. Jones and his wife, Julie, have raised four children and currently reside in the city of Orange.

Municipal Water Leader’s editor-in-chief, Kris Polly, spoke with Mr. Jones about EMWD’s world-class recycling and desalination programs, the importance of diversifying its water supply portfolio to address the needs of the service area’s growing population, and leading Southern California’s water industry into the future.

Kris Polly: Please tell our readers about your career in water management.

Paul Jones: I have been fortunate in my career to have had the experience of working in all aspects of the water and wastewater utility industry, including the last 17 years Municipal Water Leader

as a general manager of both retail and wholesale water and wastewater agencies.

It’s my passion to provide a high level of government service that is on par with what people normally expect from the private sector. My objective has always been to incorporate private-sector thinking into how we conduct business and deliver services to our customers.

To accomplish this, we focus on industry‑leading projects and programs, as well as innovation and administrative efficiency. Our overall goal is to provide the best possible value and highest level of service to our customers.

I have had the privilege of working on some very large, innovative capital improvement projects, including water supply and distribution, wastewater collection and treatment, and water recycling. I have also participated in the establishment of groundwater storage and banking programs and state-of-the-art water use efficiency programs.

At EMWD, we approach our service as more than simply a water delivery and wastewater operation—we try to think of ourselves as an integrated resource management agency. We invest in renewable energy projects and have a long-term strategy to be net energy independent. When we look at water use, we focus on water efficiency projects not only for the water conservation benefit but also for the embedded energy savings. When we look at wastewater treatment facilities, we focus on ways to partner with the private sector to beneficially reuse the biosolids, harvest the biogas, and create energy.

My staff is extremely talented and dedicated. We have a very supportive and forward-thinking board of directors.

The alignment of the philosophies of the board and EMWD’s staff is critical to the success of our operation as whole.

Prior to coming on board at EMWD, I was the general manager for more than 12 years at IRWD in Orange County, California. IRWD, like EMWD, is a retail water, wastewater, and recycled water provider known for its

innovation. While at IRWD, I was fortunate to have been able to work with the staff and board to develop a large groundwater banking project, as well as desalination, water use efficiency, water recycling, and stormwater management programs.

I also worked at Central and West Basin Municipal Water Districts, a wholesale imported water agency in Los Angeles County that also had a substantial recycled water program. I came into that organization in an engineering and management role before becoming the general manager and developed my passion for water recycling there. The agency conducted some of the earliest work on indirect potable reuse of recycled water for groundwater injection in a seawater intrusion barrier. We not only developed traditional uses of recycled water, such as irrigation, but also large industrial uses of water, including several oil refineries in West Basin that were very heavy users of local groundwater. West Basin coined the term designer water for those customers and worked with the refineries to determine and provide the type and level of treatment they needed for the recycled water they used, whether it was highly treated reverse osmosis (RO) water or tertiarytreated water.

Prior to my jobs at Central and West Basin Municipal Water Districts, I worked for 12 years in the private sector, including work with a water resource and engineering firm in Orange County. I also worked in the infrastructure planning and land development business.

Kris Polly: Please tell us about EMWD’s service area.

Paul Jones: One of our greatest challenges and opportunities is that we are only 40 percent built-out based on the jurisdictional general plans for the region. So, we are in a high‑growth area that has affordable housing and great job opportunities. We are excited to be a key driver of the economic development and vibrant quality of life of the area.

EMWD’s San Jacinto Valley Regional Water Reclamation Facility.

Municipal Water Leader

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Some areas are economically disadvantaged while others are relatively affluent. Our agricultural base is strong, although portions are slowly transitioning to urban uses as growth and land values increase. Our industrial and commercial base is also growing along with the population. We must not only meet current demand but also meet the changing demands and customer types we will likely see in the future.

We have over 600 employees, many of whom live in the community. They come to work with a sense of purpose. In my opinion, we have done a good job at vertically aligning the organization. We communicate well‑defined strategic objectives to our employees and request feedback so that they know what role they play in the organization, how they provide customer service, and how they contribute to the success of this region.

We are focused on providing a high level of customer service. For example, we staff call centers with operators who provide live service to our customers and, at the same time, provide the latest in automated customer technologies. We recognize that customers like personal service but also want convenience. We also track a wide variety of operational and customer performance metrics to continuously evaluate and improve our services.

Kris Polly: You have an active groundwater desalination program. Can you please describe that system and the long-term plans to expand it?

EMWD’s San Jacinto Valley Regional Water Reclamation Facility.

The rapid population growth and extremely arid climate require that we conduct continuous master planning and long-term analysis of the area’s water supply needs. We have a robust water resources master plan that includes a diverse supply portfolio to help us serve the area’s future needs.

As I mentioned, we are also committed to becoming energy independent. We recently invested heavily in the installation of solar photovoltaic facilities at all of our major treatment plants and headquarters. We use biogas that is produced from our wastewater treatment plants in two ways. First, at two of our wastewater treatment plants, we treat the gas and put it in fuel cells to create a very-low-emissions electrical energy source.

Second, we use the treated biogas in reciprocating engines and are conducting research on two air emissions treatment technologies to ensure we can continue to do this as air quality requirements become more stringent. A total of 40 percent of the energy used at these facilities is renewable.

We have a very socioeconomically diverse service area.

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Paul Jones: Our overall strategy is to create a drought‑resilient water supply that is sustainable. As previously mentioned, EMWD operates two brackish groundwater desalters: the Perris 1 Desalter and the Menifee Desalter. They use RO to extract the salts from the brackish groundwater that is pumped from the western portion of service area. That desalination program began in 2002 and currently procures roughly 8 million gallons a day. We dispose of the brine into a regional brine line that travels from those plants about 70 miles to the Pacific Ocean.

One thing we have done is to continue investing in technology for our brackish desalination program.

Our RO system is about 72 percent efficient. So, for every 100 gallons of brackish water we pump out of the ground, we recover about 72 gallons of fresh water and dispose of 28 gallons of brine. Last year, we entered into a public-private partnership with General Electric to test a technology originally developed for the soft-drink bottling industry, which both entities believe has great potential for brine treatment. By using this technology, we were able to increase our fresh water recovery rate from 72 to 98 percent. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is one of our partners on this project and has been Municipal Water Leader

extraordinarily helpful.

This brine treatment technology project is a promising advancement and exemplifies how the organization applies technologies to meet the challenges associated with limited water supplies. I like to tell people we have a unique approach to research and development: small on the research side and big on the development side. We are looking for technologies that are practical and can provide new water supplies, renewable energy opportunities, improved wastewater treatment techniques, or other direct benefits.

In this regard, if you look at our two desalters, we are disposing of about 25,000 tons of salt annually. When we import water from the Colorado River and the State Water Project, we are bringing salts into the service area. As that water is used, it percolates into the groundwater basins, and salts build up in those basins. Not only do the desalters control where the brackish water moves in the basin, they also remove and offset nearly all the salt imported into our service area. We look at water quality, water supply, and sustainability through salt management.

We currently have another desalter under design. It would increase the production by another 6,000 acre-feet per year. We plan to initiate the construction of the related treatment facilities in 2018. We also have a partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers under its Environmental Infrastructure (EI) program to drill and equip several wells that will feed into our current desalting facilities to treat additional brackish groundwater and create a drought‑proof sustainable supply. The EI program has not received as much support as we’d like to see from Congress and the administration, but this is a well-run program that can benefit water agencies all over the country seeking to augment their water supply.

Kris Polly: Please explain how your local supply investments, namely groundwater desalination and recycled water, are related to EMWD’s strategy to reduce dependence on water imported from the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta and the Colorado River?

Paul Jones: Our board of directors has spent a lot of time looking at our reliance on imported water. At one point in time, approximately 80 percent of our water supply was imported. Today, we rely on imported water for 50 percent of our service area needs. We are always going to rely on imported water, but we need to continue to pursue a balanced water supply portfolio going forward.

The State Water Project and imported water systems are stressed due to drought and endangered species impacts. We are also experiencing changes in the system’s delivery patterns due to variations in climate and associated hydrology. We need to continue to develop and maximize Municipal Water Leader

our local water supplies to offset needs for additional imported water.

Kris Polly: How do you integrate conservation and reuse into your plans for meeting future water demand?

Paul Jones: Our customers tend to think of conservation as a short-term response to a drought. EMWD has been successful in shifting the community’s water ethic away from short-term conservation to long-term water use efficiency. We are pursuing permanent changes in uses of water.

Over the last couple years, we implemented a substantive program to change outdoor uses of water. We worked very closely with the county of Riverside last July to adopt a water use efficient landscape ordinance that is among the most progressive in the state. For all new development, we disallow nonfunctional turf or decorative grass and encourage climate-appropriate landscaping compatible with our arid region. Commercial centers and streetscapes in our service area are either removing or no longer planting high‑water-consuming, nonfunctional turf landscaping.

Those objectives allow us to become more efficient and manage our resources.

We also provided financial incentives, in partnership with Metropolitan, to our individual ratepayers to remove turf on residential properties. We have removed about 3 million square feet of turf in our service area. As customers see their neighbors remove turf, they want to do the same. The removal of nonfunctional turf and the transition to climate-appropriate landscaping is becoming the new norm.

Our recycled water program is also very important—it’s about identifying the right kind of water for the right use.

Our recycled water is nonpotable water from our tertiary treatment plants. We use it for parks, golf courses, school grounds, and homeowners’ association landscaping. We also have some significant industrial customers, including a large electrical energy production plant.

Public acceptance of recycled water is very high in our service area because of all the educational outreach we have performed. They understand that we live in an arid area and must reuse our supplies as much as we can. The public education component is critical to our efforts. We introduce our award‑winning water use efficiency educational curriculum to young students in grade school. We reach about 60,000 students annually. We invest in developing a strong water use efficiency ethic with all our area’s residents, regardless of age, so everyone can be part of the effort to sustain our resources.

Agricultural customers currently use a significant portion of our recycled water. As we have increased flows in our wastewater treatment plants and created more recycled 7

water, and as a portion of our agricultural base urbanizes, we are looking at other areas in which we can use recycled water.

EMWD is advancing an indirect potable reuse project that will use advanced treatment technologies, including microfiltration, RO, and ultraviolet disinfection, to create a highly treated recycled water that can be used to recharge our groundwater basins. It will ensure in the long term that we adhere to the strategic goal of 100 percent beneficial use of recycled water.

Kris Polly: EMWD has been successful in leveraging external funding for its projects, including the Perris II Desalter, which received a $3.6 million allocation as part of the Corps 2015 Work Plan for the construction and equipping of new groundwater wells. Please tell our readers how this money was obtained, and EMWD’s strategy in securing outside funding.

Paul Jones: We began the process by identifying a number of strong projects that clearly show a long-term benefit to our region’s water supplies. We worked very closely with the federal agencies to help them understand the federal nexus in funding these programs.

We have been very active in applying for grants and loans. In the past eight years, we have secured about $400 million in outside funding for desalination facilities, sewer systems, and recycled water infrastructure. We have been able to demonstrate that we are very capable of successfully executing projects. No grant will fund the entire cost of a project, so we also have to be a good financial

partner. We are always willing to provide a significant local funding match and professionally manage those projects.

The state and federal agencies have been supportive because our projects have clearly defined benefits and our performance in delivering those projects has been excellent.

We have great relationships with our federal partners, such as Bureau of Reclamation, the Corps, and our local members of Congress. We make a point to visit with them often to educate them about our projects and work together to solve any challenges that may arise. Our projects are neither uniquely federal nor uniquely local. They have benefits at the national and local level, so it’s important to build and maintain cooperative relationships with the agencies of jurisdiction and with decisionmakers. We understand that if the agencies are going to invest in our efforts by providing us with grant funding or technical assistance, we must work to deliver an outstanding project.

Kris Polly: EMWD is nationally recognized for its recycled water program. Please describe the program and how it has evolved.

Paul Jones: From our perspective, if we can beneficially use water multiple times, that is really the ultimate form of water use efficiency and conservation. Recycled water has become a highly valued commodity in our service area and a critical portion of our water supply portfolio. Our board advocated a strategic goal three years ago to recycle 100 percent of our wastewater and move toward zero discharge. That means that all the water that is reclaimed at our four wastewater treatment plants would be put to

EMWD’s Menifee Desalter Facility.

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Municipal Water Leader

beneficial use. For the last three years, we achieved that goal and discharged nothing. We are wholly committed to being an industry leader in water recycling and managing the resources in this area.

As I mentioned, we have focused on diversifying our recycled water customer base in recent years. Users of our recycled water include entities with municipal irrigation needs, industrial needs, and agricultural needs, for both food and nonfood crops. We irrigate about 10,800 acres of land in our agricultural sector with recycled water. We also have a large state wildlife preserve in the area that uses our recycled water for restored wetlands, open water ponds for a variety of birds and wildlife, and other related uses for the environment.

Federal funding has played a big role in the successful diversification of our recycled water program. We recently procured state funding through a state water bond under Proposition 1 to expand storage. One of the challenges in a recycled water system in an arid area is high demand in the summer and lower demand in the winter, so you need to have seasonal storage to regulate these variations. This project will create 6,000 acre-feet of seasonal storage in our system to help us meet increasing demands. In 2015, we were able to serve about 38,000 acre-feet of recycled water to our customers.

We help our irrigation and industrial customers currently using potable water with onsite conversion to recycled water. Our board adopted the accelerated recycled water retrofit program, which enables customers to participate in a long‑term payment structure to finance the onsite conversions. We also have a partnership with Metropolitan, which has a grant program for onsite conversion costs. We are attempting to convert customers not yet on the recycled water system as quickly and as cost effectively as possible.

Kris Polly: What is your outlook and assessment for local supply investments in meeting future regional and national water needs?

Paul Jones: Due to the drought and ongoing imported water supply challenges, our agency, as well as others, must be fully committed to local supply investment. Our future demands for growth will be best served through innovation and continued diversification of our supply portfolio. Since the early 1990s, Southern California has invested over $12 billion in local water supply infrastructure, including groundwater and surface water storage reservoirs, brackish and seawater desalination, and nonpotable and indirect potable water recycling.

EMWD and other agencies are constantly looking at technologies and water augmentation innovations that were not historically considered cost effective. Today, those technologies and innovations are critical to helping us meet Municipal Water Leader

our needs. Agencies in our region that have access to water reclamation facilities are focusing on all types of reuse. It will become an even bigger part of the region’s future.

However, if you look nationwide, the United States produces about 33 billion gallons of wastewater per day, but less than 10 percent of that number is put to beneficial use. Because of hydrology, there isn’t a sense of urgency in most areas in the eastern United States to develop recycled water and similar local supplies in the same way that we have in the West. Many areas in the eastern United States have other unique challenges, such as aging water and wastewater infrastructure and source water quality. That may change over time as the water supply effects of climate change and fluctuating weather patterns become part of the norm for the entire country.

Kris Polly: What is your message for our federal, state, and local decisionmakers?

Paul Jones: I think it is very important that the water industry continues to focus on diversification of water supplies, water use efficiency, and overall supply resiliency.

That requires partnerships with state and federal agencies.

We need to collaborate to meet existing and future demands to ensure the economic prosperity of the areas we serve. We also need to do this in the most environmentally responsible manner possible, which means incorporating water use efficiency and water recycling, and developing new sustainable supplies at the local level. At the same time, however, we must ensure that our imported supplies are stable and reliable. We need to make significant financial investments now, in conjunction with the federal and state agencies, for the success of our entire water supply portfolio and the ongoing success of our service area and Southern California’s economy.

EMWD’s wetlands at the San Jacinto Valley Regional Water Reclamation Facility.

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Clean Water Act Citizen Suits

By Chris Carr

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n January 2015, the Eastern Municipal Water District (EMWD) was shocked to receive a notice of intent to sue under the Clean Water Act (CWA) from lawyers representing California River Watch. The notice began a costly year-long saga that ended in March 2016, when the federal district court in Riverside, California, entered judgment in favor of EMWD. As a result, California River Watch agreed not to bring any environmental suit against EMWD for a period of eight years.

This is not the way CWA citizen suits against public water treatment agencies are usually resolved. The overwhelming majority of such suits are disposed of by consent decrees or settlement agreements that require the public agency to pay the plaintiff ’s attorney’s fees and costs, make physical changes to their facilities, and donate money for a “supplemental environmental project” to an organization often identified by the plaintiff. Many publicly owned treatment works (POTWs) must pay millions of dollars to meet these demands.

There are serious questions as to whether this sue-andsettle dynamic is what Congress intended by authorizing CWA citizen suits and whether it produces a material benefit to water quality. The answer to the first question is a resounding “no,” at least when it comes to POTWs in California. Instead, as explained below, judicial interpretation of the CWA’s citizen suit provision has turned it into an engine for plaintiffs to extort settlements out of public agencies; the asymmetric leverage enjoyed by such plaintiffs has only been enhanced by a corresponding judicial failure to actively manage such cases to ensure that discovery is not disproportionate and does not effectively coerce defendants to settle. The answer to the second question is that such suits may lead to an improvement in water quality in only the most extreme cases, and that, again, at least when it comes to POTWs in California, the many costs occasioned by the full spectrum of such suits far outweigh any benefits to water quality in the rare, outlier case.

This article discusses some of the now-inherent features of CWA citizen suit litigation that almost invariably make it economically irrational, especially for a public agency, to defend itself, and how EMWD and its attorneys were able to overcome those perverse incentives in this case.

Hopefully, the approach taken can be emulated by other public agencies and their attorneys to ensure that the CWA citizen suit provision is not abused and to restore

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Secondary Clarifier at the San Jacinto Valley Regional Water Reclamation Facility.

some balance to a process that has become a boon to plaintiff attorneys and does not protect the water quality of POTWs in California.

EMWD Background

EMWD supplies freshwater and recycled water and provides wastewater treatment services to a 555-square‑mile area in Riverside County, the heart of Southern California’s famed Inland Empire. For decades, EMWD has been a leader among California water supply and water treatment agencies and an active member of the Association of California Water Agencies and the California Association of Sanitary Agencies.

EMWD has long prided itself on not just adhering to, but also helping to establish, best practices for wastewater treatment, recycling, and supply. It is blessed with a highly committed and credentialed staff. Because of its standard-setting approach, professionalism, and commitment to the environment, EMWD has enjoyed strong working relationships with local, state, and federal regulators, especially the regional water quality control boards with jurisdiction over its operations.

The Clean Water Act’s Success

The CWA was enacted in 1972. It is one of the foundational federal environmental laws and has played a major role in the improvement of the nation’s water quality over the last 40 years. It should be cause for celebration that incidents like the fire on Ohio’s Cuyahoga River (caused by unchecked industrial pollution), which helped inspire enactment of the CWA, are a thing of the past in the United States. The CWA and its National Municipal Water Leader

Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) program, administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and state water quality agencies, deserve tremendous credit for this success story.

Citizen Suit Statutory and Constitutional Requirements

Since its inception, the CWA citizen suit provision authorizes any person to file suit against a party in violation of the CWA. 33 U.S.C. §1365.

A party violates the CWA if it (1) lacks a required NPDES permit authorizing it to discharge a pollutant into a water of the United States from a point source (a pipe is the paradigm case) or (2) fails to comply with an existing NPDES permit’s requirements for discharges. At least 60 days before filing suit, a citizen plaintiff must send a notice of intent to sue to the defendant, giving it an opportunity to come into compliance, if possible, with the requirements of the CWA (or its permit); EPA and the state water quality agency must also be copied on the letter so they can take enforcement action if warranted.

In addition to these statutory prerequisites to filing a citizen suit, a plaintiff must be able to satisfy the standing requirements of Article III of the U.S. Constitution before filing suit. To satisfy this constitutional requirement, the plaintiff must be able to establish that (1) it was injured by the alleged violation of the CWA, (2) the defendant caused the alleged injury, and (3) the relief sought by the suit will redress the plaintiff ’s injury. These three prongs of standing are designed to ensure that the federal courts are called upon only to adjudicate actual controversies.

Municipal Water Leader

Judicial Interpretation of the Requirements On first blush, the many statutory and constitutional prerequisites to a citizen suit would appear sufficient to screen out at least some number of clearly misguided lawsuits that will not materially improve water quality and protection of the environment. But this is all too frequently not the case, principally because of the way federal courts have interpreted those requirements.

Article III standing, especially in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, has been interpreted very loosely. In a citizen suit brought under a federal environmental statute, the plaintiff need only show that one of its members has used the area allegedly affected and wants to do so in the future in order to establish injury in fact. In addition, the 60-day notice generally is not a meaningful filter. The ninth circuit has held that dates of alleged violations do not have to be specifically set forth in the notice letter and reasoned that it is the recipient, not the sender of the letter, who has the information and is in the better position to know about its own facility and whether it is complying with the requirements of its permit. And, where the responsible state water quality agency takes enforcement action, the ninth circuit has held that such action stands as a bar to a citizen suit only if stringent standards are met for whether the agency assessed a penalty comparable to the penalty that could have been assessed in a citizen suit. Taken together, such decisions have made it difficult to defend even clearly unmeritorious lawsuits without having to go through the burden and expense of extensive discovery and motion practice, to say nothing of a trial.

Judicial interpretation of other aspects of the CWA citizen suit provision also stack the deck in favor of citizen suit plaintiffs. Perhaps the most obvious is judicial interpretation of the fee-shifting provision of the statute. The language of the statute itself is neutral between prevailing plaintiffs and defendants: The court “may award” fees and costs “to any prevailing or substantially prevailing party, whenever the court determines such award is appropriate.”

33 U.S.C §1365(d). However, federal courts have interpreted this language to mean that a court can award attorney fees to a plaintiff who prevails to any extent, even if it proves only a single violation, but to a prevailing defendant only if the defendant shows the suit was frivolous. Some courts have recently started to gesture in the direction of cutting back on this one-way ratchet, but presenting a record to give a court comfort to deviate from the near-universal norm is challenging to say the least.

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defendant will usually have to pay the plaintiff ’s fees for propounding and obtaining that same discovery if the plaintiff prevails in any degree. In addition, responding to discovery is a tremendous drag on the resources of the agency and its employees, whose day jobs of treating water and ensuring compliance with regulations do not go on hold during the litigation. These and the other judicially created structural incentives noted above usually make it economically irrational for a public entity to take any course other than to settle a citizen suit brought against it wholly without regard to the merits, its carefully planned infrastructure improvement plans, or what its state and federal water quality regulators may think.

2015 Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Governing Discovery One of EMWD's vactor trucks.

Discovery

Another way in which the federal courts have contributed to the proliferation of citizen suits is through failure to exercise meaningful control over discovery in CWA cases. Discovery, the process whereby parties in litigation request documents and information from each other to develop and build their cases, is notoriously expensive and time consuming. There are many discovery tools a party can use. In the CWA citizen suit context, the most common are interrogatories (written questions to which the other side must provide written answers), requests for admission (written statements that the other side must admit or deny), requests to produce documents (descriptions of types and categories of documents, copies of which the other side must provide), and depositions (questions put to a live witness under oath).

The default position of federal courts in civil litigation has long been to allow plaintiffs in CWA citizen suits to undertake comprehensive discovery to flesh out their allegations. Too often, comprehensive discovery has been of the kitchen sink variety, intended to unnecessarily drive up litigation costs to force a settlement. Once discovery has been served on the defendant, the dynamics of a CWA citizen suit usually change considerably, especially if the defendant is a public agency.

Even if the defendant ultimately prevails, it has to foot the bill for its own attorney’s assistance in identifying and collecting documents requested in discovery by the plaintiff, reviewing those documents for attorney-client privilege, assisting in responding to written discovery, and preparing witnesses for and representing them at depositions. But given the unilateral character of the fee-shifting provision, as interpreted by the courts, the

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Fortunately, recent changes to the discovery rules in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) may help make CWA citizen suits a little less coercive. Amendments to the FRCP, many years in the making, took effect on December 1, 2015. The changes to Rule 26, which governs the scope of discovery, were the most controversial of the 2015 amendments because they emphasized the duty of the court and parties to ensure proportionality in discovery, meaning that the scope of discovery and associated costs must be proportional to the issues in the case.

This renewed emphasis should encourage more judges to take a close look at requested discovery and help defendants successfully advance case management proposals that will curb many of the historical discovery abuses in CWA cases. While the FRCP has for decades authorized judges to actively manage cases, and discovery in particular, prior to the 2015 amendments most judges in civil cases were reluctant to do so because they came of professional age in a civil litigation culture where it was a given that discovery is extremely broad in scope. As a result, some judges did not view the expense of discovery as the court’s “problem” to deal with. Yet others, even if they appreciated the coercive character of discovery on defendants, and especially public agencies in environmental cases, likely allowed discovery to proceed even if the plaintiffs appeared to have a weak case because they believed that by giving the plaintiff their shot, a court of appeals would be less likely to reverse a decision dismissing the suit. If the recent changes to the FRCP are taken seriously, there should be a shift in judicial attitudes about discovery.

The California River Watch v. Eastern Municipal Water District Litigation

In the suit filed by California River Watch against EMWD, the plaintiff—like clockwork—propounded extensive discovery, telling the court: “Eastern Municipal’s Municipal Water Leader

defense will require River Watch to undertake comprehensive discovery, including requests for documents, admissions, and responses to interrogatories, and depositions of both Eastern Municipal management and workers necessary to shed light on each and every alleged violation.” EMWD countered by explaining that it “believes the parties should agree to (or the Court should order) limitations on and phasing of discovery to control fees and costs. Eastern Municipal requests this approach to discovery to avoid the perverse incentives and dynamics, prevalent in so many CWA suits against POTWs—a plaintiff conducts broad and sweeping discovery to drive up costs, all in an effort to secure a settlement.” More particularly, EMWD requested that the court stay all discovery in the case except for its discovery requests to California River Watch concerning its alleged standing to sue. EMWD explained that the resolution of that threshold jurisdictional issue by a motion to dismiss filed pursuant to FRCP 12(b)(1) would save the court and the parties substantial time and resources.

At the case management conference in December 2015, the court agreed with the case management proposals advanced by counsel for EMWD and took control of the case. The court, in accordance with the recent amendments to the FRCP, granted the request of EMWD’s counsel to stay discovery on all issues except for those relating to California River Watch’s alleged injuries (which are prerequisite to standing). The court also granted the request of EMWD’s counsel to set a briefing and hearing schedule on an evidentiary-based rule 12(b)(1) motion to dismiss, requiring California River Watch to present evidence of its alleged injuries to the satisfaction of the court before the case moved forward.

This was all done over the objection of counsel for

Temecula Valley Regional Water Reclamation Facility.

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California River Watch.

After the case management conference, EMWD aggressively pursued discovery from California River Watch and learned that the “member” of the organization alleged to have been injured was . . . its own lawyer in the case. EMWD promptly noticed a deposition for that lawyer. In February 2016, two days before his deposition was set to go forward, California River Watch’s counsel informed counsel for EMWD that California River Watch intended to voluntarily dismiss its suit. As California River Watch was already on its second amended complaint, it would have needed to obtain leave of court to voluntarily dismiss its suit.

Pursuant to a stipulated order, the briefing schedule on EMWD’s motion to dismiss was pushed out, and the parties informally agreed to suspend discovery while settlement discussions continued. In late March, the court dismissed California River Watch’s suit with prejudice.

The parties entered into a stipulation, as a precondition to the entry of the judgment, that provided California River Watch would not bring any CWA suit against EMWD for eight years and would not bring any other action against EMWD relating to alleged violation of any other environmental statute based on its activities as a POTW for eight years.

Conclusion

The take away from this article for POTWs (and really almost any CWA citizen suit defendant) should be that it is possible to overcome judicially created incentives in CWA citizen suits to settle and, instead, defend themselves against unmeritorious suits. Further, actual defense sends a strong message to the plaintiffs’ bar and will likely deter future shake‑down efforts to extract settlements that fund yet further suits and require expenditures that do not result in any material improvement to water quality and protection of the environment. The 2015 amendments to the FRCP, particularly those concerning discovery, may provide reason for hope that it is not presumptively economically irrational to defend against a CWA citizen suit. But this will only be the case if the judge presiding over the case takes seriously his or her duties to engage in active case management and to police discovery, as the judge did in California River Watch v. Eastern Municipal Water District.

Chris Carr, who heads up the Environment and Energy Practice Group at Morrison & Foerster LLP, was counsel to Eastern Municipal Water District in the California River Watch litigation. Mr. Carr can be reached at (415) 268‑7246 or CCarr@mofo.com.

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T

THE T HMEE T ME

ICT STR ICT DI ISTR D

LITAN WA PO TAN W TER O ATE RP O L I R RO

YEARS OF WATER DELIVERY

IA

IA

OF F O

YEARS OF WATER DELIVERY 2016 1941 2 1 0 16 194 SO N ONR F SO UTHE R I N CAL R UT HERN CALIFO

EngineeringaaMarvel Marvel Engineering It is easy to forget the sheer audacity of it all.

It is easy to forget the sheer audacity of it all.

The Colorado River stopped 300 miles east of the Southern The Colorado RiverCalifornia stopped 300 milesplain. east of the Southern coastal California coastal plain.

Bridging this gap required erecting an aqueduct in the middle Bridging this gap requiredoferecting an aqueduct in the middle the desert. of the desert.

No roads, no telephone lines, no electricity, and certainly No roads, no telephone lines, no electricity, and certainly no air conditioning. no air conditioning.

And doing it in the middle of the biggest economic collapse And doing it in the middle of thehad biggest economic collapse that the nation ever seen. that the nation had ever seen.

It was the 1930s equivalent of a moon shot.

It was the 1930s equivalent of a moon shot.

Surv ey team exploring possibl e aque duct routes, 1927.

S urv ey team exploring possible aqueduct routes, 1927.

St a rt of aqueduct wo rk cel ebrat i on, Cabazon, CA., 1933.

St art of aqueduct wo rk cel ebrat i on, Ca bazon, CA., 1933.

Aqueduct dri l l i ng cont est wi nners, 1934.

Aqueduct dri l l i ng cont est w i nners, 1934.

THE METROPOLITAN WATER DISTRICT OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA THE METROPOLITAN WATER DISTRICT OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Aqueduct tu n n e l w o r k e r s , 1 9 3 4 .

Aqueduct t unn e l w o r k e r s , 1 9 3 4 .

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A Lot of Ingredients in This Year’s WRDA

By Stephen Martinko, Jim Sartucci, and Sarah Beason

C

ongress is working hard to complete a Water Resources Development Act for 2016 (WRDA 2016) before the summer congressional recess.

Stakeholders with an interest in U.S. Army Corps of Engineers civil works projects, water resources policy, water supply issues, or funding for maritime or water infrastructure projects should pay close attention to congressional action on WRDA 2016 in the coming months.

Senate Committee Overwhelmingly Approved WRDA 2016 On Thursday, April 28, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved bipartisan WRDA 2016 legislation (S. 2848), a $9 billion measure, with a 19-1 vote. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-OK) described the bill as achieving a good balance with “a lot of ingredients.”

S. 2848, like most Water Resources Development Acts (WRDAs), authorizes improvement and maintenance projects for U.S. maritime transportation infrastructure, such as harbors, dams, locks, and navigation channels. Unlike traditional WRDAs, the Senate bill also includes an aid package for Flint, Michigan, and promotes policies and provides financial assistance aimed at improving drinking water and wastewater systems throughout the nation.

Promoting Maritime Transportation Infrastructure Traditionally, WRDA bills authorize Corps civil works projects; reform funding mechanisms, such as the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund or Inland Waterway Trust Fund; and address Corps’ water resource policy issues.

The Senate’s version of WRDA 2016 authorizes 25 Corps projects with a chief of engineers report, including major harbor investments, flood-control measures, and environmental restoration work, as well as certain modifications to existing projects.

The bill also updates the cost-sharing formula for harbor-deepening projects for which the federal government has responsibility for 75 percent of the dredging costs by increasing the upper depth threshold to 50 feet from 45 feet.

It also extends to fiscal year (FY) 2025 the 10 percent set-aside from the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund for emerging harbors and the grant program for donor and energy transfer ports.

Until full use of harbor maintenance tax revenues is achieved, which is targeted for FY 2025, the Senate’s WRDA 2016 seeks to ensure that funds are increasingly appropriated to dredging activities at ports by requiring the

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annual authorized target funding level to be greater than the previous fiscal year’s funding level.

Additional policy changes include authorizing the Corps to provide technical assistance to independent feasibility studies; expanding Corps authority to accept funds from states and local governments for all water resources projects, not just flood control; allowing the Corps to partner with nonfederal interests to help address maintenance backlogs for Corps projects; permitting service providers to operate Corps recreation facilities and collect and keep associated user fees; and streamlining and expediting approval processes for certain dredging projects.

Unique Provisions on Drinking Water and Wastewater Systems Going beyond the scope of a typical WRDA, the Senate bill aims to increase water supply and improve crumbling drinking water and wastewater systems. To this end, the bill authorizes more than $6 billion for programs under the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Water Act, including a $220 million aid package to address the Flint, Michigan, crisis.

The Senate’s WRDA 2016 authorizes a number of grant programs to assist communities with maintaining and updating their drinking water and sewage-treatment systems. One grant program is focused on helping small and disadvantaged communities that lack basic Municipal Water Leader

drinking water or wastewater services with $1.4 billion in authorized funding over five years, and another grant program authorizes $300 million over five years for the replacement of lead water lines. An additional $1.8 billion in grants is authorized over a five-year period to address sewer overflows and stormwater discharges. The bill also seeks to help local communities meet U.S. Environmental Protection Agency mandates by allowing them to prioritize the most severe health threats.

The bill also promotes green infrastructure and innovative technologies to address drought and water supply needs. The legislation would allow federal entities to increase water supply through a variety of projects, such as increasing the storage capacity of federal reservoirs and diverting water released from a federal reservoir.

The nonfederal interest requesting such measures would be responsible for the cost of implementation and the operation and maintenance costs attributable to the alteration. Another provision would require the Corps to review its reservoir operations to improve weather forecasting and runoff forecasting, prioritizing areas with prolonged drought and reservoirs that have not been reviewed in the past 10 years. In addition, the Corps would be required to update its water control manuals to incorporate revised forecasting models. The upper Missouri River, the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee River system, and the Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa River system are exempt from these provisions.

Additionally, building off the Water Resources Reform and Development Act of 2014, the Senate bill makes changes to the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation program by clarifying the scope of eligible projects, authorizing the financing of fees for small community applicants, and explaining that the 51 percent of project costs funded by non‑Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation sources includes costs incurred and in-kind contributions made before receipt of the loan.

The bill also removes the requirement that the Water Infrastructure Public-Private Partnership Pilot Program be authorized in an appropriations bill.

Significant Motivation to Complete WRDA 2016 Despite the challenges associated with the congressional calendar during a presidential election year, the key players in the Senate and the House are highly motivated to complete a bipartisan WRDA in 2016 as part of their commitment to returning to a two-year cycle for WRDA bills.

Moreover, this is the last term for Chairman Inhofe to serve as chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee due to term limits, and Ranking Member Barbara Boxer (D-CA) is retiring.

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Next Steps Both chambers are aiming to pass WRDA 2016 before the July recess. The Senate bill is expected to be considered on the Senate floor in late May. Although the House has not yet released a draft WRDA, Chairman Shuster has indicated he plans to have WRDA on the House floor by June, which means that the House will likely mark up its bill in May. The House is expected to move forward with a more traditional and modest proposal for WRDA, which Chairman Shuster has referred to as a “pamphlet bill.” It remains to be seen how the two chambers will reconcile a more robust Senate WRDA containing nontraditional elements with the narrower approach anticipated in the House.

Stephen Martinko is a government affairs counselor in K&L Gates’ public policy and law practice. He concentrates on federal legislative and regulatory advocacy, engaging on a wide range of policy issues with a focus on transportation and infrastructure, maritime, and energy matters. His diverse public policy and management experience includes service as executive director of the Port of Pittsburgh Commission, deputy staff director of the U.S. House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and chief of staff to Congressman Bill Shuster (R-PA), chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Stephen can be reached at stephen.martinko@klgates.com.

Jim Sartucci is a government affairs counselor in K&L Gates’ public policy and law practice. He has more than 13 years of practical experience on Capitol Hill, working inside the legislative process on issues including maritime, Coast Guard, Homeland Security, transportation, oceans, fisheries, and science programs and policy. Prior to joining the firm, Jim spent 9 years working for Senator Trent Lott (R-MS), for whom he served as legislative director. Jim can be reached at jim.sartucci@klgates.com.

Sarah Beason is an associate in the firm’s Washington, DC, office. Sarah can be reached at sarah.beason@klgates.com.

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The Contributions of the Corps’ Planning Process: Reducing Hurricane and Flood Risks to the Nation

By G. Edward Dickey, PhD

Lessons From Southern Louisiana

These shortcomings have been amply demonstrated in southern Louisiana. Extensive engineering works for From the very beginning of the program, U.S. Army managing the Mississippi River and numerous largeCorps of Engineers’ civil works projects have been scale coastal navigation and storm damage reduction developed based on situation-specific studies resulting in projects have caused widespread and ongoing changes recommendations tailored to particular circumstances. These in physical landscapes and ecosystems. The Corps and studies incorporate hydrologic; engineering; economic; project sponsors did not foresee these changes, or if they and, for several decades now, ecological, cultural, and did anticipate them, they considered such changes to be other environmental knowledge and analyses. The Corps’ a necessary consequence of economic advancement. In feasibility study process has served the nation well and has addition, these works allowed new patterns of economic provided us with extensive infrastructure that is essential activity and changed where and how people live and work. to the effective functioning of our economic system and The historic focus of storm and flood damage project continuing economic growth. However, it has not been development was on reduction of inundation damages perfect. to property. Clearly, as in the case of New Orleans, the Not all projects have performed as predicted or have Corps, nonfederal sponsors, and those who lived in been as productive as anticipated. Structural or operational protected areas paid insufficient attention to residual risk modifications have been required to accommodate and to the vulnerability of the occupants of protected changing economic conditions, new scientific knowledge, areas when the provided project protection proved technological change, and changing public values. The Corps inadequate. The potential for disruption of human activity and nonfederal project sponsors historically paid insufficient within protected areas and the economic consequences attention to the interactions between engineering structures, to the rest of the nation were not addressed in any detail. which extensively modified hydrologic regimes, and the The devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina is a physical and biological environment. Equally important, compelling demonstration of the reality of residual risk insufficient attention continues to be paid to the effect of and the necessity to include its management in water hazard reduction on human behavior. resources planning and project implementation.

Overview

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The Value of Civil Works Planning

The Civil Works Program has always been at the forefront of situation-specific planning. The major outputs of water projects—flood and storm damage reduction, navigation, and water supply—lend themselves to monetary benefit estimates. Most project costs can be quantified in monetary terms as well. Comparisons of benefits and costs of specific project possibilities are readily made. Moreover, each planning situation is unique in terms of the issues to be addressed and the opportunities to address them. There are no cookie‑cutter, one‑size‑fits‑all, environmentally sensitive solutions to flood and storm threats or any other mix of water‑related issues. Congress has long recognized that fact and has generally required the submission of a Corps report before it takes action to authorize and fund a project. This approach to public investment decisionmaking allows government to function at its best: making informed choices among competing values as identified in a feasibility study.

Situation-specific feasibility studies are important from several perspectives. Not enough resources are available to produce all the goods and services we value. This is true at all decision levels, public and private. As individuals, we must make tough choices about how to use our incomes.

Businesses cannot do all that they might want to do in order to increase their profits. Federal, state, and local governments not only face conflicts among competing values in resource management, they also confront the fact that there are more demands for their respective budgetary resources than they can satisfy.

As Congress works toward fiscal year 2017 appropriations and moves forward on the Water Resources Development Act of 2016, it must justify allocating available program funds in one direction or another. The reality is that many problems must remain unaddressed or incompletely solved, and many opportunities are left to the future. It behooves us, therefore, to make the best use of what we have. Scarcity must be addressed in individual project planning and at the program level, where the competing budgetary demands of meritorious projects across the nation are balanced in the most responsible way possible.

The Corps’ Planning Process as It Relates to Individual Project Decisions

Analysis plays an essential role in decisionmaking throughout the water resource planning process. The Corps is required to go well beyond the calculation of a benefit‑cost ratio for a recommended project.

Incremental analysis is at the heart of the Corps’ plan formulation process. Projects of different scales and scopes are systematically considered so that tradeoffs among alternative mixes of project purposes and alternative solutions can be identified and the relative merits of

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different plans for resource use can be systematically evaluated in light of prevailing economic, environmental, and social values.

The Corps has been a pioneer in applying incremental analysis to develop ecological restoration plans and multiple purpose plans to provide a mix of economic and ecological outputs. In situations where benefits are not monetized, as in the case of ecological restoration, costs of successive increments of output are identified with the goal of weeding out unproductive project features for which the expenditure of resources does not produce commensurate benefits. In short, tradeoff analysis is essential to informed choice among competing alternative plans regardless of the nature of the alternative plans’ outputs.

Sometimes significant aspects of a comprehensive plan are not captured in a cost-benefit or cost-effectiveness analysis. Regional and social impacts not contained in the plan’s economic analyses can be significant in decisionmaking. An appropriately constructed display of tradeoffs provides a framework for consideration of these impacts. Congress and a project’s nonfederal sponsor should be able to understand the price, in terms of both benefits foregone and additional costs incurred, of accommodating these kinds of concerns. Again, the Corps’ analytic framework assists informed decisionmaking by both the federal government and the project’s sponsor regardless of the complexity of the issues and the possible tradeoffs among competing values.

Programmatic Benefits of Corps Project Planning Sound, situation-specific feasibility studies are essential from the programmatic perspective as well. Well-crafted, situation-specific planning helps ensure that the Civil Works Program is as productive as possible. State and local governments, in their role as project sponsors, clearly influence federal spending priorities by their willingness to contribute their funds to project implementation. However, the effective limit on the size of the Civil Works Program is federal funding.

Federal appropriations have not kept pace with the willingness of nonfederal project sponsors to contribute funding. Because of the constraints on the overall Civil Works Program imposed by federal funding limitations, expending funds on projects that contain unproductive elements imposes a major cost to the nation in terms of the benefits foregone. Construction of other productive Civil Works projects is delayed or eliminated. Tradeoffs among projects are real at the programmatic level and at the project level.

The scarcity of federal appropriations is not reflected in individual Corps feasibility studies, but the limited availability of federal funds certainly should be an essential consideration as project proponents select their preferred damage mitigation strategies.

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Climate Change and Its Effects

Recent scientific evidence has made water resource planning even more challenging. Global warming and its effects, including sea level rise and changing weather and storm patterns, will make traditional Corps feasibility studies more complex. Sea level rise brings an added consideration to many types of planning studies, not just Corps studies, in coastal areas. Climate change may influence estimates of benefits and costs, and project designs may be influenced substantially as a result of climate change and its effects. As scientific information continues to be developed, the effects of climate change should be incorporated into feasibility studies.

New Policy Directions

I believe that the Corps’ traditional planning approach offers the best hope for responding wisely to evolving hurricane and flood threats.

Four programmatic policy changes that would improve Corps feasibility studies and project implementation warrant the attention of Congress. They are briefly summarized below. The first three pertain directly to the Corps’ planning process. The fourth addresses a larger policy issue.

First, Corps planning should be focused on managing the total flood risk rather than on developing a federal project to manage a portion of the risk. There will always be a flood risk after any plan is implemented. Both Congress and the nonfederal sponsor should be given a plan for managing the total risk. Congress should ensure that every plan that it authorizes is complete in that structural measures are accompanied by appropriate local and regulatory management measures. While it is not a new idea (see, for example, section 202(c) of WRDA 1996), Congress and the administration have not reviewed the effectiveness of floodplain management plans required of project sponsors and adjusted the program accordingly.

Second, the Corps needs to do a better job of identifying and quantifying the benefits of its projects.

We can now fully appreciate that large‑scale, albeit infrequent, events like Hurricane Katrina have economic and social costs that extend beyond the standard project benefit calculations typically contained in Corps reports.

Expansion of benefits calculations will require development and use of new techniques and expertise and will require added resources for individual studies and for research that can support the uses of broader benefit calculations.

Third, the effects of new water resource infrastructure on the location of human activity should be explicitly addressed in the planning process. Since the 1960s, resource investment and management planning has increasingly recognized and addressed interactions between federal projects and ecological systems. Project-induced effects on human activity continue to be largely ignored

24

in Corps feasibility studies. Congress should require that the Corps and its nonfederal sponsors evaluate changes in the location of human activity and private investment that are likely to be induced by a damage mitigation project.

Management actions, such as zoning and building codes that minimize undesirable effects, should be required of the sponsor as an integral part of the plan’s implementation.

Fourth, National Flood Insurance Program policy should be altered. Civil works planning takes place in a larger federal policy framework. Properties located outside the 100-year floodplain are not subject to the requirements of the National Flood Insurance Program.

Communities sometimes see the objective of a civil works storm or flood damage reduction feasibility study to be to find the cheapest way to remove the community from the requirements of the federally mandated flood insurance program rather than how to provide the best flood damage reduction plan for its inhabitants. Such thinking distorts project decisionmaking and shifts attention away from the issue of residual risk. Congress should require properties that benefit from a federal storm or flood damage reduction project to maintain policies that would insure them against residual flooding risk. This requirement would promote better plan selection decisions and better use of the lands afforded a degree of flood protection by a project.

Summary

Congress should continue to rely on situation-specific water resource studies when deciding to authorize and fund measures to reduce the evolving hurricane and flood threat. Sound water resource planning considers the economic, environmental, and social conditions of a particular place and allows the inevitable tradeoffs among competing values to be addressed in an informed way.

Sound planning also helps ensure that Congress will make the best use of available federal funds as it allocates resources across competing projects nationwide. More comprehensive analyses, the management of residual risk through flood insurance requirements, and other actions by project sponsors that complement a federal investment can further improve our nation’s ability to protect floodplain residents from hurricane and flood threats.

Dr. Ed Dickey is a water resources policy and project development and management consultant and a senior advisor at Dawson & Associates. During his long career in the Army’s Civil Works program, Dr. Dickey served in several capacities, including as deputy assistant secretary and acting assistant secretary for civil works. He can can be reached at gedickey@verizon.net or (202) 486‑8955.

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Eastern Municipal Water District and General Electric Test Promising New Water Recovery and Brine Reduction System

E

astern Municipal Water District (EMWD) recently tested General Electric (GE) technology applied to increasing water recovery and brine concentration. The results were very promising. The GE water recovery system raised the overall water recovery for EMWD from 75 percent to 95 percent during the test period. The system combines GE’s electrodialysis reversal (EDR) technology with the expertise from the company’s brine concentrator product line to achieve high recovery. At EMWD, the system treats the reverse osmosis (RO) brine to provide clean water for blending and waste streams. The waste streams from this process are gypsum and a highly concentrated brine stream that can then be sent for disposal.

Brine Concentration Brine concentration is a useful tool for municipalities to help improve their water footprint. Achieving higher recoveries has two important effects: higher product flows and reduced waste flows.

The increased product flow reduces the municipality’s reliance on other purchased water sources to meet residents’ demands, thereby saving operating costs. With reduced waste flows, disposal fees are significantly reduced.

High Water Recovery This high water recovery technology and process is a twist on the traditional EDR system. In an EDR, the salts are removed from the feed stream using electrical current. The brine stream collects the removed salts and concentrates them in a brine loop.

In traditional EDR, this brine loop becomes supersaturated to allow for elevated recoveries. To further increase the recovery, a precipitation step is added into the brine loop. This step allows for the controlled precipitation of gypsum, removing the supersaturated constituents from the brine stream. The treated brine stream is then reprocessed through the EDR stack to recover more water and to gather more salts for the precipitator.

EMWD’s Pilot System In the pilot project at EMWD, the system treated 7 gallons per minute (gpm) of RO concentrate over the course of about eight months. The test period was broken down into three phases: (1) starting up and understanding process operations, (2) stabilizing the process and optimizing it to achieve good product water quality and target recoveries, and (3) running the system at a steady state to prove the stability of the process.

There were many lessons learned during the first two phases that were implemented to achieve the final water recovery results and stability in the third phase.

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EDR is part of the advanced water recovery system that has increased recovery from 75 to 95 percent at EMWD.

One important set of lessons involved an expected challenge with overcoming the effects of silica and calcium carbonate scaling. When treating any brine stream, the saturations are already high. Therefore, scaling, and more importantly, controlling the scaling, are key factors in running a system like EMWD’s plant. These scaling issues happened during the first two phases, when GE was gaining knowledge of the overall process. By adjusting chemical dosages and modifying flow rates for various streams, GE was able to reduce the scaling to run steadily for the final phase.

Benefits and Costs Are Important to Technology Development Benefits and costs are critical in evaluating this new technology. GE’s end goal is to make Municipal Water Leader

the implementation of this technology economical and beneficial for customers. EMWD currently purchases some of its feedwater and also must pay to dispose of the waste stream. To realize the true cost-benefit, the entire water process must be taken into account, not just the brine disposal costs. Currently, the analysis shows that the cost‑benefit ratio is close to even. The cost of treatment allows EMWD to increase the potable water it produces from its fresh water source and also reduces the waste stream volume, so it pays less in disposal fees. As the technology improves, GE hopes to optimize costs further.

With increasing costs to purchase water and increasing disposal fees, this ratio will continue to improve in favor of using the technology.

GE’s top business priority is to help customers protect the environment and combat water scarcity through applying the best technologies to meet its needs. Both desalination and treated water from traditional surface sources have their place in the market. GE has leading technologies to use virtually any water source and provide the quantity and quality needed for its customers.

As with any water treatment technology, there are challenges to achieving the desired quantity and quality of water. In the EMWD process, the challenge was to overcome the scaling issues during the first two phases of the test period, to prove the stability of the process and achieve desired water recoveries in the third phase.

In desalination, the challenge could be the approval of a permit before a plant can be built. Desalination is viable when the plant is in close proximity to the ocean and there are no other water sources available. For example, it may be more cost effective to treat wastewater to meet fresh water needs. GE is also investing in technologies such as lower energy desalination membranes and energy efficient pumping to reduce the cost of operating a seawater RO. For EMWD, seawater desalination was not a viable solution because the district is situated over 45 miles inland—any benefit would have been negated by the energy costs to pump seawater to and from the plant.

desalination technologies help solve complex challenges of water availability and quality, which helps increase productivity, reduce costs, enhance efficiency, and protect the environment.

GE Is a Leader in Water Reuse Technologies The future of alternative water sources is promising. As the global demand for clean water increases, GE encourages and enables water reuse practices that save water, energy, and money with technologies that allow water to be reused economically, sometimes many times over. GE’s water reuse technology is transforming wastewater into a sustainable, new water source—dramatically reducing dependency on fresh water resources and helping solve water-related issues.

From a technology standpoint, GE makes significant investments in research and development to solve global water-related challenges through its diverse product portfolio. GE has doubled its investment in research and development for water and continues to develop advanced technologies for wastewater treatment and reuse.

GE technology teams and global research centers are collaborating on driving these next-generation technologies.

For example, the company is exploring a number of key areas for advanced reuse and recovery technologies: advanced membrane based systems, which can help recover 70–85 percent of water; thermal evaporation, crystallization, and bio‑polishing, which can help recover 98 percent of water; and wastewater recovery systems, which are designed for beneficial use.

EMWD Will Realize Increased Recovery and Reduced Disposal Costs “By implementing GE’s advanced water recovery system,” said Andrew Sparkes, sales director of GE’s water and process technologies, “EMWD will increase the amount of potable water they produce from their fresh water source while also reducing the disposal fees they pay for their waste stream.”

The Future of Desalination Is Bright As seawater membranes and pumping systems become more efficient, desalination can become the best solution in water‑scarce areas that have ample access to seawater. GE’s

The EMWD process uses a concentrated RO brine to feed the water recovery system and achieve greater water recovery while reducing waste streams for disposal.

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Turning Water Challenges Into Opportunities in the Southeast: A Discussion With Atlanta Regional

Commission’s Katherine Zitsch

K

atherine Zitsch serves as manager of the Natural Resources Division at the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC), a position she has held since January 2013. As such, she is responsible for overseeing the work of the Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District, the 15-county water planning agency for metropolitan Atlanta. The district works with local governments, water and wastewater utilities, and stakeholders to develop comprehensive water supply and conservation, wastewater management, and watershed management plans for the region (www.northgeorgiawater.org).

Ms. Zitsch also coordinates ARC’s work on water litigation issues, oversees ARC’s Green Communities program, and oversees implementation of the Georgia’s Metropolitan River Protection Act. Ms. Zitsch holds a bachelor of science degree in civil engineering and a master of science degree in environmental systems engineering, both from Clemson University. She is a registered professional engineer in the state of Georgia as well as a board‑certified environmental engineer through the American Academy of Environmental Engineers.

Municipal Water Leader’s writer, Valentina Valenta, spoke with Ms. Zitsch about the tristate water wars, the efforts of ARC and Georgia’s Water Supply Providers Group to ensure a sustainable water supply for metropolitan Atlanta, and ARC’s dedication to regional water supply planning and management for the area’s growing population and economic health.

Valentina Valenta: What is the Water Supply Providers Group, and how does it engage in water management issues affecting the Atlanta metropolitan area and Georgia?

Katherine Zitsch: The Water Supply Providers Group is a group of metropolitan Atlanta cities, counties, and water systems that rely on water from projects managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The group formed decades ago to coordinate with the Corps and more generally to secure metro Atlanta’s water 30

supply. In addition to defending the region’s interests in litigation and before Congress, we also interact with the Corps on matters related to the operation of the reservoir system.

Valentina Valenta: Please give our readers a short description of the tristate water wars, including a summary of the current issues in litigation and the status of the litigation. We can focus on the last federal circuit court decision and the Florida v. Georgia case, which is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Katherine Zitsch: There are two separate disputes involving two river basins: the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) River basin, which covers portions of Florida, Georgia, and Alabama, and the Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa (ACT) River basin, which covers portions of Alabama and Georgia (but not Florida). Both basins are controlled by reservoirs operated by the Corps. The three states have been quarreling over the operation of these reservoirs and, more generally, over the allocation of water in the basins, for over 30 years.

Most of the attention is now on Florida’s suit for an equitable apportionment of the waters of the ACF basin, which is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. Florida is asking the Supreme Court to say, once and for all, how much water Georgia is entitled to use. Florida claims that Georgia is using too much water and causing harm to the Apalachicola River and Bay. Florida claims, in particular, that Georgia’s water use caused the oyster fishery in Apalachicola Bay to collapse. Georgia contends that its use is reasonable and that others factors, such as overfishing, caused the oyster fishery to collapse.

The focus of the litigation in the ACT River basin is the Corps’ failure to address long-standing requests by Georgia and Cobb County-Marietta Water Authority to allocate additional storage in Allatoona Lake to water supply. The Corps has failed to address these requests for more than 35 years—even when it adopted a new master water control manual for the ACT River basin in 2014.

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COOSA BASIN

Hall Bartow

Cherokee Forsyth

OCONEE BASIN

Paulding

Gwinnett

Cobb

TALLAPOOSA BASIN

Douglas

DeKalb

Fulton

CHATTAHOOCHEE BASIN

OCMULGEE BASIN Clayton

Rockdale

Henry Fayette Coweta

FLINT BASIN The Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District encompasses 15 counties and 92 cities including and surrounding the City of Atlanta.

In their lawsuit, Georgia, ARC, and the Cobb CountyMarietta Water Authority are asking the court to give the Corps a deadline to address these long-standing issues.

The state of Alabama and other Alabama entities have filed a separate action in the District of Columbia, taking issue with other elements of the new ACT water control manual.

Valentina Valenta: What is an equitable apportionment? Doesn’t this same concept apply to Supreme Court water apportionments?

Katherine Zitsch: Equitable apportionment is the doctrine the Supreme Court uses to apportion interstate resources between or among states. It provides for all Municipal Water Leader

relevant factors to be considered to determine a fair allocation.

Valentina Valenta: Back in the 1990s, Congress enacted an ACF compact for the three southeastern states that ultimately became inoperative because the states failed to agree on an equitable apportionment of water in the basin. Have you found anything that recommends renewing such an effort?

Katherine Zitsch: A negotiated agreement would clearly be the best solution, and we support Georgia’s efforts to negotiate a settlement. Mediation is ongoing between Georgia and Florida regarding waters in the ACF basin. In the meantime, metro Atlanta focuses on 31

continually improving its water stewardship. Our efforts are yielding results. Since 2000, total water use in the Metro Water District has dropped by 10 percent. At the same time, the population grew by 1 million. Looking ahead, we anticipate that our projected water use in 2050 will be about 25 percent lower than was forecast when the last plan was adopted in 2009. This means that water conservation has become a way of life in our region.

Valentina Valenta: Please tell our readers why return flow is an important issue for municipal and industrial use of reservoirs in your region.

Katherine Zitsch: As a little background, metropolitan Atlanta is located in the headwaters of six different river basins, and our access to groundwater is limited by the geology here. Our region typically experiences plenty of rainfall (an average of about 50 inches per year), but because we are located on small headwaters, we need storage for our water supply. The Corps built reservoirs on the two best sites in the region in the 1950s. To complicate matters, Atlanta sits on the intercontinental divide between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. So some water that we use from the Chattahoochee River and Lake Lanier would naturally flow by gravity out of the basin after it is used. In order to

address this, metropolitan Atlanta cities and counties have begun building large pipelines to return treated wastewater to the lake and the river, so that the water can be returned to the basin and reused.

Returning water to Lake Lanier for reuse increases our water supply, and water providers have spent more than $1 billion on the infrastructure to accomplish this.

The investments include constructing state-of-the-art reuse water reclamation facilities, as well as the necessary pipelines and pumping stations. But the Corps contends that all water entering its reservoirs must be divided up and allocated to all users pro rata, meaning that the water providers only get credit for a small fraction of the water they return. So, in not crediting return flows to the users that created them, the Corps is discouraging water providers from undertaking further local and regional projects to increase water supply. This negatively affects everyone is the river basin.

Valentina Valenta: What do you recommend to the federal government to improve water management in the southeastern United States?

Katherine Zitsch: At a time when federal resources are constrained, it is increasingly important for federal, state, and local agencies to work together to manage shared

ACF/ACT

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resources and to maximize the return from every federal dollar that is spent. The Corps can play an important role by partnering with state and local agencies to help them accomplish their goals. Too often, existing practices and policies actually impede, rather than facilitate, local initiatives. The return flow issue is a perfect example.

We also think there is tremendous opportunity for the Corps to use new forecasting and other predictive techniques to optimize reservoir operations in order to maximize benefits while balancing the needs of all users.

For example, examining basin conditions such as soil moisture content, rather than focusing simply on reservoir levels, can help the Corps determine sooner whether we are entering a drought and adjust accordingly. These opportunities exist, not just in the southeast, but across the nation.

We do not support legislative mandates to this effect— flexibility is key—but we do think much more can and should be done.

Valentina Valenta: We understand that the Water Supply Providers Group has funded a number of studies that were useful in the ongoing litigation. Drawing on that body of knowledge, what can you tell us about the potential effect of another severe drought on Atlanta’s

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economy and the environmental science associated with mussels and oysters in Apalachicola Bay? Katherine Zitsch: A severe drought will affect the economic and environmental health of the entire river basin, but the robust conservation and efficiency measures put in place over the past 15 years will help mitigate the effects of a drought. While drought affects Apalachicola Bay just as it affects all parts of the river basin system, the Corps’ draft environmental impact statement for the ACF basin acknowledges that none of the water supply options being considered for metro Atlanta have any material adverse effect on the Apalachicola Bay. As the Corps’ technical analysis explains, metro Atlanta’s water supply withdrawals “do not have an appreciable effect on flow conditions in the Apalachicola River,” and meeting metro Atlanta’s future water needs will have “no appreciable, incremental effect on freshwater inflows to Apalachicola Bay.” That said, our work on continuous improvement never ends. Metro Atlanta utilities and the Metro Water District are currently working on next steps in conservation and efficiency as part of the Metro Water District’s 2016 Plan Update.

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Beyond Flint: A Conversation With George Hawkins About Keeping Drinking Water Safe in the District of Columbia

G

eorge Hawkins is the chief executive officer and general manager of the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority (DC Water).

Today, the water situation in Flint, Michigan, is on everyone’s minds. The District of Columbia faced a similar issue in early 2004 when the media reported that some homes in the city had elevated levels of lead in the drinking water.

Some residents believed there to be a major public health crisis with immediate health implications.

Municipal Water Leader’s editor-in-chief, Kris Polly, spoke with George Hawkins about the history of the district’s challenges with lead in the water; DC Water’s efforts to maintain the safety of Washington, DC’s, drinking water and its delivery systems; and what everyone in the district and around the country can learn about how to approach water safety today and in the future.

Kris Polly: Please tell our readers how DC Water responded to its environmental management challenge in 2004, and what the status of this problem is currently.

George Hawkins: In the early 2000s, the District of Columbia faced a lead and water crisis. It was linked to a

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change in the treatment process that is undertaken by the Washington Aqueduct, a federal entity run by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. [The Army Corps runs the treatment plant for the water that is delivered to the city and some surrounding jurisdictions.] Beginning in 1998, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began phasing in the disinfection byproduct rule, which directed water utilities, including DC Water, to use chloramines for disinfection and phase out chlorine. The shift in water chemistry related to the disinfection byproduct rule unexpectedly contributed to the increase in lead levels in the city’s drinking water.

The unexpected outcome of the modification was the leaching of lead from lead service lines—the part of the water distribution system that runs from the mains to homes or businesses. The change in water chemistry reduced the protective scaling on the inside of the city’s service lines, causing the lead in the pipe that had previously been isolated from the drinking water to leach into the water system. The increase in lead levels in the water in some peoples’ homes at that time exceeded the monitoring trigger for action, which is set by the EPA at 15 parts per billion (ppb).

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DC Water’s response to this problem was dictated by the lead-copper rule set forth by the EPA, which requires utilities to develop a plan within 12 months of lead action levels for replacing lead service lines at the rate of 7 percent per year in the distribution system. Under the lead-copper rule, several steps were necessary to correct the problem. DC Water and the Army Corps followed all three steps.

The first step required a change to the water treatment program to reduce the corrosiveness of the treated water to the pipes. The goal was to eliminate or significantly reduce the leaching of the lead from the pipes into the drinking water.

The second step involved developing a program to replace lead service lines. As I mentioned, the target for replacing lead service lines was set at 7 percent a year.

The third step is ongoing education of the customers so that they understand the nature and extent of the risk of the problem and what we are doing to help them.

This educational component also includes making sure homeowners are aware that they are responsible for identifying other sources of lead in their homes. The second part of this step includes using an enhanced monitoring program. When contaminant levels in the drinking water exceed 15 ppb, water agencies are required to use a more sophisticated monitoring program to assess risks to the drinking water system until the issue is resolved. The city and the Army Corps have done a wonderful job monitoring contaminant levels since the lead issue in the early 2000s.

we will do the public-side lead line in concert. We do that for our customers on demand. We have enhanced our program at DC Water beyond what is mandated by the lead-copper rule. To learn more about our lead pipe replacement program, visit our website at https://www. dcwater.com/lead/pipe_replacement.cfm.

Kris Polly: What lessons learned can you share with other water utilities to help them prepare for, avert, or better confront a situation like this?

George Hawkins: What we first learned is that we need to be extremely careful about any changes to the treatment system, particularly on the drinking water side. Today, we are very careful about changes to both the drinking water system and the wastewater treatment system. On the wastewater side, it is a terrible outcome if you have pollutants going into the rivers, oceans, or bays.

On the drinking water side, we changed from chlorine to chloramine because of the risk of disinfectant byproducts coming from chlorine treatment. The use of chlorine in the distribution system often meant that there were byproducts in the water that you did not want. What had not been evaluated was the potential consequence of that change to lead service lines. No one would ever have approved the change, especially without a treatment approach like orthophosphate, if there were even a slight concern about the effects of the disinfection change.

The Army Corps and DC Water both have testing regimes that are founded around what we call pipe loops.

Kris Polly: Can you please tell us how the addition of orthophosphate protects the distribution system and reduces corrosion and leaching of lead?

George Hawkins: Orthophosphate was added to the water treatment process in order to create a protective lining between the lead on the inside of the pipe and the drinking water flowing through it. The addition of orthophosphate quickly contributed to a significant reduction in lead levels in the district’s drinking water.

DC Water continues to use orthophosphate in the water distribution system today, and we continue to get extremely low lead level readings of about 4 ppb, which is well below the EPA standard of 15 ppb.

Kris Polly: Please tell our readers about DC Water’s lead pipe replacement program.

George Hawkins: We also have a lead service line replacement on-demand program. If you contact us to say that you want to remove your private-side lead line,

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At DC Water’s testing lab, we have set up a whole series of lead-lined pipe loops that are fed by the water in our system. Before making any minor change in the system, we monitor what happens in the pipe loops— essentially mimicking what the bigger change might be—before we implement it in the full system. The Army Corps does the same testing. By using the pipe loops, our goal is to capture, respond to, and manage a consequence prior to it affecting the system and the people we serve.

Kris Polly: What is your message for DC Water customers regarding lead levels and meeting other perhaps yet-unknown challenges to drinking water safety?

George Hawkins: There has been tremendous distress in the drinking water industry about the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, because it goes against the core ethic of our enterprise: to provide a safe source of drinking water to the people that we serve. We are completely dedicated to ensuring a safe outcome. At DC Water, we want our customers to know that the issue of lead in water is one of our highest priorities. We also want our customers to know that we no longer do partial lead service line replacements, but if a customer wants to eliminate the lead service line on their side, we will replace the public service

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line to remove all lead in the service.

We are continually looking at ways to improve our communications materials. We are continually looking at the latest analysis about how to present the very best advice and outcomes to our customers.

The message for parallel, perhaps unknown challenges is that public safety is our highest priority. In response to the water crisis in the district during the early 2000s, one of the challenges that DC Water faced was that it did not communicate quickly enough to its ratepayers about the health and safety risks. Although I was not at the district during that time, when I reflect on that time, that may be true, but I think no one really knew what had happened. The presence of increased lead levels in the water was a mystery to both the EPA and the Centers for

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Disease Control. The change from chlorine to chloramine was considered a positive step, and when it turned out to have a negative consequence, it caught everyone off guard.

Since I came onboard DC Water in 2009, the district has called five boil water or do not use the water alerts. We choose to call those alerts when we think we might have a risk to the drinking water supply rather than when we know we have a risk. In the past, the district would want to get all the monitoring measurements back and know exactly what happened before communicating an alert, but now, if we have a good analytical framework for why we think there might be risk, we will call that alert immediately.

Our protocol includes going door to door, contacting the media outlets and television stations, and using social media to inform the public of a potential risk. We were fortunate that in all five cases in which I called drinking water alerts, it turned out that the risks we thought were in the water supply during those times were false alarms. When we spoke with our customers about those alerts, they uniformly told us that they were grateful that DC Water took the public health as the highest priority, even if it meant raising the alarm about a potential risk. If we wait to notify our customers until we are absolutely certain there is a risk, people would be drinking

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contaminated water for days before we alert them.

Our cautionary approach gives our customers the confidence they need to understand that their health and safety is our highest priority. Our program with lead, like many of our other programs, is constantly evolving so that we can meet even greater challenges in the future. We want our customers to know that our job is to preserve their trust in our efforts and mission. We are getting better every day, and we will continue to do so to ensure that DC Water protects all its customers from any possible risks to their drinking water. That is the very least we can do as a public service agency, and it is what we at DC Water strive to achieve every day.

For more information about DC Water’s efforts to protect Washington, DC’s, drinking water, visit https://www. dcwater.com/news/publications/DCWASAFAQ.pdf.

All photos courtesy of DC Water.

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2016 CALENDAR

April 10–16 National Association of Clean Water Agencies, Water Environment Federation,

Water Environment Research Foundation, and WateReuse Association,

National Water Policy Forum – World Water Week, Washington, DC April 11–13 National Water Resources Association, Federal Water Issues Conference, Washington, DC April 24–28 National Association of County Engineers, Annual Conference, Tacoma, WA May 3–6 Association of California Water Agencies, Spring Conference & Exhibition, Monterey, CA May 19 Value of Water Coalition and National League of Cities, Securing Our Water Future: 21st Century

Solutions for 21st Century Cities, Dirksen Senate Office Building G50, Washington, DC May 20 Agribusiness & Water Council of Arizona, Annual Meeting, Tempe, AZ June 8–10 U.S. Water Alliance, One Water Summit 2016, Atlanta, GA June 13–14 Idaho Water Users Association, Summer Water Law & Resource Issues Seminar, Sun Valley, ID June 15–17 Texas Water Conservation Association, Mid-Year Conference, Horseshoe Bay, TX June 19–22 American Water Works Association, Annual Conference & Exposition, Chicago, IL June 22–23 Water Leader Workshop Sponsored by the Irrigation Leader and Municipal Water Leader magazines,

Milwaukee, WI June 22–24 WESTCAS, Annual Conference, Santa Fe, NM July 10–13 National Association of Clean Water Agencies, Utility Leadership Conference &

46th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO August 3–5 National Water Resources Association, Western Water Seminar, Sun Valley, ID September 23–24 Water Quality Association of Wisconsin, Annual Convention, Wisconsin Dells, WI ___________________________________________________________________________ To include your event in the calendar, e-mail Municipal.Water.Leader@waterstrategies.com.