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Entries for the 'Drinking Water Rules' Category
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?
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.
Steve Wilson posted on October 07, 2011 05:00
A little over a month ago, we let you know about 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. In that blog post, we said we would provide more information about how this tool can help you. Today, we are going to cover some of the basics about when and why you should communicate with the public.
Why Send Out Advisories
You all know when its required, legally, to send out an advisory, most commonly a boil order, but there are a range of things that could result in an advisory, and more importantly, would be good business practice to do so. The thing you need to take away from this blog post is that you can use advisories for your benefit, to educate your customers and to engage them to take ownership of their water system.
Advisories are many times required, necessary, and bad news; they can also help you by helping your customers understand what is going on with your water system. The toolbox says there are 4 reasons to issue an advisory:
- to provide information,
- to encourage preparedness,
- to recommend action, and
- to meet public notification requirements.
Using Advisories For Your Benefit
Do you send out advisories to provide information? These are the advisories that don't require any customer action, but let them know that something is going on. The example the toolbox mentions (on page 10) is to let customers know about seasonal changes in taste. How many of you let customers know when you are flushing lines, or dosing chlorine, or when a large storm affects your influent water quality and taste or color? Or even when you are going to be working on a water main that might shut down a road in town? Or when you are drilling a new well? Some of you may not see the need to let your community know about all of these things, they would rather deal with the few phone calls they get. What you are missing is an opportunity to teach your community more about what you do.
Changing Public Opinion
Most of us would agree that in small towns, people tend to take their water for granted. Many pay very little for clean, safe water, but the public tends to view their water as a right, not a privilege. You, as the operator, understand this is not the case. You, as the operator, are also in the best position to change that public perception. Advisories are one way to do that. When you are drilling a new well, send out an advisory letting the community know they will be getting a new resource that will benefit them. Include the cost, why its necessary, what it will mean to the town. When chlorine is going to be an issue, send out an advisory. Let them know why its necessary, how it protects them from bacterial contamination, and offer them additional resources to learn more about it.
Be Proactive
It can't be stressed enough that the operator is the front line person for educating the public about their water system and why water costs what it does. The public needs to understand that though water itself is free, delivering clean, safe water to every home, park and building has a cost both in delivery and to maintain. You are the person who should be explaining those costs, every chance you get.
If You Need Help
If this is all new to you and you need help, let us know. We would be glad to find free materials for you to use with customers. We can also contact your local/regional technical assistance providers to get their suggestions and support of your efforts. If you really want to get serious about keeping your community in the loop, you could even start a Facebook page and post information regularly on different aspects of your system. We can help you set that up too (for free).
Jennifer Wilson posted on June 15, 2011 10:33 
Last month we blogged about a new type of technology that can help utilities communicate with customers, in A New Era for Public Notification. We’re excited about the opportunities and efficiencies that communication technology will bring to water and wastewater systems in the coming decades. However, there are important regulatory implications we glossed over.
 While the Public Notification regulation offers flexibility to allow systems to use these technologies as part of their program, these electronic forms of messaging may not sufficiently reach all residential, transient and non-transient users of a water system, as is required in Tier 1 notice situations. Thus, it is only one piece of the puzzle and a utility owner should not assume all their bases are covered with an investment in the technology.
Ed Moriarty, a team leader in US EPA’s drinking water program, shared with SmallWaterSupply.org: “Regardless of the method to deliver the notice, water systems have to consider the situation and audience, and make the best effort to reach everyone of interest.” To ensure your system’s focus remains on notifying the public in robust and compliant methods, its important to work with your primacy agency in crafting a plan that includes these new technologies. As they become more widespread in the future, SmallWaterSupply.org suspects that the primacy agencies will issue more formal guidance as they pertain to adhering to the PN rule.
Furthermore, we wouldn’t want to suggest that these technologies may eventually replace requirements for distribution of annual drinking water quality reports under the Consumer Confidence Report regulation. While some states are investigating modern methods for additional delivery, the regulation still requires a hard copy be delivered to the customer.
Of course, these caveats do not supercede the fact that SMS and email notification are excellent methods for distribution of non-regulated notification, like billing reminders and local infrastructure improvements. Above all, proactive communication with customers across the spectrum of needs should be an essential component of any system’s business plan.
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