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27

Does Your State Offer You "Safe Harbor"?

Steve Wilson posted on March 27, 2012 09:42
I was at the Alabama Rural Water Association Conference a few weeks ago and there was a really interesting talk by a lawyer for an Alabama utility.  The utility is being sued by a few of their customers for poor water quality even though their water meets all health standards.  If a water supply provides water that meets all of the health standards and their operation meets all of the regulatory requirements, should their customers be able to sue them if they percieve there are water quality problems? Thats a tricky question for sure.
 
Safe Harbor
A safe harbor law basically protects someone from civil suit if they are meeting all of the legal and professional requirements for the services they provide.  For instance, a prosecutor in a district attorney's office has immunity from civil action, even if they help put an innocent man in jail.  For a water system, this type of law would mean that your customers cannot sue you for percieved water quality problems if you are meeting all of the requirements of the Safe Drinking Water Act and your state regulations.  Alabama currently does not have such a law.
 
What's Happening In Alabama
Because of the lawsuit currently going on in Alabama, there is a push to pass a "safe harbor" law as an amendment to the Alabama SDWA. It's going through their state legislature now and appears to have alot of support.  In the ongoing lawsuit, 10 homeowners that are spread throughout a 53 home subdivision, claim their water has oil and grease in it.  Testing by the utility and extensive testing by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management show there are only normal, background levels in the water (a trip blank even had similar levels in it).  I don't want to get into the details, but 3000 customers use water from the same main, and some of the allegations (like their water catches fire), are hard to understand if the water is meeting all of the SDWA standards. 
 
What It Means
I'm not a judge or jury, but I do believe that if a utility is meeting its legal obligations and works with their customers fairly and openly, there should be some reasonable expectation that the utility met its obligation and has their customers best interests at heart. As the speaker said, without this legislation, any customer could sue any utility and that could lead to a jury setting water standards in that state, "regulation by litigation" is the term he used.  Can water systems afford litigation because of unhappy customers? 
 
How about you?  Does your state have "Safe Harbor" legislation attached to its SDWA rules?  Do you think it's a good idea?

 

Posted in: RWAs, Consumers, Drinking Water Rules, Safety
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06

Quick Things You Can Do To Protect Your Water Sources

Steve Wilson posted on March 06, 2012 11:11
by Jeremiah Corbin, Source Water Protection Specialist at South Dakota Association of Rural Water Systems
 
 
Put up signs
Post signs along the border of your source water protection area to notify people that
any pollution in that area can affect the quality of local drinking water.

Use and dispose of harmful materials properly
Don’t dump them on the ground! Hazardous waste that is dumped or buried can contaminate the soil and move down into the ground water, or be carried into nearby surface waters by runoff during rainstorms. You might be surprised to learn that a number of products you use at home contain hazardous or toxic substances. Products like motor oil, pesticides, leftover paints or paint cans, mothballs, flea collars, weed killers, household cleaners and even a number of medicines contain materials that can be harmful to surface water and ground water.

Don’t overuse pesticides or fertilizers
You might apply fertilizers to make your grass thick and green, your flowers colorful and your vegetable crop abundant. You also might use pesticides to keep bugs from ruining what the fertilizers have helped to produce. What you might not know is that many of these fertilizers and pesticides contain hazardous chemicals that can travel through the soil and contaminate ground water. If you feel you must use these chemicals, use them in moderation.

Volunteer in your community
Find a watershed or wellhead protection organization in your community and volunteer to help. If there are no active groups, consider starting one. Use EPA’s “Adopt Your Watershed” to locate groups in your community, or visit the Watershed Information Network’s “How to Start a Watershed Team”. These tools can be located by searching epa.gov.
 
Identify ways you can help prevent runoff pollution from your home, business or farm
Check out Give Water a Hand (for students) or the National Farm*A*Syst/ Home*A*Syst Voluntary Assessment Programs (for farmers and homeowners) to find out how you can be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.
 
Join in a beach, stream or wetland cleanup
You can make new friends while you help protect source water.

Prepare a presentation about your watershed for a school or civic organization
Discuss water quality threats, including polluted runoff and habitat loss. Highlight things people can do to protect water quality, including limiting fertilizer use and eliminating the use of herbicides and pesticides. Research your presentation using EPA’s Nonpoint Source Program.

Organize a storm drain stenciling project
Stencil a message next to the street drain reminding people “Dump No Waste - Drains to River” with the image of a fish. Stencils are also available for lakes, streams, bays, ground water and oceans, as well as the simple “Protect Your Water” logo with the image of a glass and faucet. Produce and distribute a flyer for households to remind residents that storm drains dump directly into your local water body.
 
This article was originally published in the January-February issue of ServiceLine, a publication of the South Dakota Association of Rural Water Systems.
 
SmallWaterSupply.org Comment: This information would make a great handout for your customers, in addition to reminding you about the importance of source water protection for your community.  Contact us if you have any questions.

 

Posted in: RWAs, Source Water Protection
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12

What is the cost of NOT mailing the CCR?

Jennifer Wilson posted on December 12, 2011 08:05

You may have read about pending legislation in Congress that would eliminate the requirement to mail the annual Consumer Confidence Report for public water systems who have no violations. (Instead, in-compliance systems could post the CCR to their website.) The National Rural Water Association is supportive of this potential change, citing unnecessary cost and time burden for small utilities.

I certainly do agree that small communities face unprecendented challenges in maintaining their water and wastewater systems. State and federal funding is harder to come by and when it does, it has more strings attached. With so many operators retiring and so much infrastructure that needs upgrading, we've neared a financial crisis point.

We talk a lot here at SmallWaterSupply.org about the value of water, the need to proactively communicate with customers and how, these items together, can develop an engaged and informed public that can help us find a way out of today's troubles.

On the surface, it seems like a good idea, but I wonder... is eliminating an established line of communication, often the only connection the average citizen has to his water outside of billing, really the best way to look for financial efficiency? Could it do more harm than good and set back the efforts of national public outreach campaigns, state capacity development programs and direct technical assistance?

 

Posted in: RWAs, Consumers, Capacity Development, Value of Water
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28

Suggestions For Using The Drinking Water Advisory Communication Toolbox

Steve Wilson posted on November 28, 2011 07:39
This is the 3rd post covering the communication toolbox, a new tool available from CDC on how to prepare, deal with, and learn from situations where you need to (precautionary) or have to (mandatory) communicate with your customers to advise them of a drinking water situation in your community.  The 1st blog post provided an overview of the toolbox, the 2nd blog post discussed the introduction section of the toolbox, which explained some of the basics about when and why you should communicate with the public. Today, we'll provide you with some suggestions they provide for small systems.
 
For Small Systems Using the Toolbox
The toolbox was written for water systems, both large and small.  But, it was developed with both in mind.  We've already mentioned that we think the toolbox is one of the most complete tools available to help you with communicating with the public during an emergency, and on page 13, they offer some suggestions for small systems, recognizing that sometimes small systems may not have the capacity to implement all of the suggestions listed in the toolbox.  Basically, these are the things every small system should do to be prepared, regardless of the emergency.
 
1. Identify and prioritize specific tools or sections in the toolbox to use.  The toolbox is worth going through, cover to cover, to really understand what it means to communicate with your customers and to be prepared in an emergency.  In doing so, you will find many great ideas that will help you prepare, act, and recover from an emergency situation.  Pick and choose what you think will work for your specific situation and within the capacity of your system and community.
 
2. Incorporate water advisory protocol planning into regular activities, such as sanitary surveys and updating emergency response plans.  I'm sure some of you think this is "beyond" what you can do, and may not even have an emergency response plan in place for your system.  That is a great place to start and there are some great templates available from RCAP and Rural Water that walk you through development of a plan.  Do that first, and you will understand why its important to be prepared and think ahead, rather than react to an emergency. (call or email us, we can help, as can your local TA providers.  See the links to the templates below).
 
3. Build water advisory protocols into regular communication, such as customer updates.  Again, some of you may look at this and say, I never send stuff to my customers.  Why not?  When operators tell me their customers want "free" water, and don't value what they do, I tell them to start marketing to their customers, help them understand what a service you provide, how important safe water is to your community. Operators can't just do the technical stuff anymore, they have to engage their communities to understand the need and importance of safe water.  Along with that is the importance of dealing with emergency situations.
 
4. Partner with local public health and neighboring water systems. Planning for an emergency means working with others outside your community.  When a real disaster happens, you need to know what to do, who you can call, who you can rely on for help.  You need to ask yourself, what does your community deserve? Doing it all on your own usually ends up hurting your community when a disaster occurs. It's the responsible thing to do, and best for your system and customers.  This would also be a good time to mention your state's WARN program.  Look into it, consider how it might benefit your community.
 
Getting Started
Remember these suggestions as you go through the toolbox.  Find the pieces that you think will work for you.  It states that many of the actions you can consider taking, as described in the toolbox, shouldn't require outside support from consultants or others.  It also says building a network of partners and organizations to work with in an emergency is the key to success.  We agree.
 
Should you have any questions, let us know. We will gladly help you navigate through the material and find resources that you can use with your customers for both emergency response and just for marketing the value of your water system.
 
Below are links to some of the resources mentioned above:
 
Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP)
 
National Rural Water Association (NRWA)
 
Water & Wastewater Agency Response Networks (WARN)
(click on the "WARN Regions" tab to find your state WARN program)

 

How To Run Your System Like A Business is a series at SmallWaterSupply.org, appearing on Monday.

 

Posted in: Support, RWAs, RCAPs, Consumers, Drinking Water Rules, Safety, Blog Series: Small Water Biz, Emergency Response, Value of Water
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