The Water Environment Federation proudly announces the winners of the 2010 WEF Excellence Awards. The awards will be presented at the WEF Awards and Presidential Celebration Reception during WEFTEC® 2010, WEF’s 83rd annual technical exhibition and conference, this October in New Orleans, La. [Read more]
The Western Sustainability and Pollution Prevention Network (WSPPN) and the California Environmental Protection Agency Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) announced today a video contest on the subject of pollution prevention. The contest is open to the public and the deadline for submission of a 60 second or less video is September 19. The winning videos will be featured during Pollution Prevention Week September 20-27; this year honoring the 20-year anniversary of the Pollution Prevention Act signed by Congress in 1990. Video contest winners will also be recognized at a ceremony during the WSPPN 2010 Conference in San Diego on October 27-28. [Read more]
By Pei-Chin Low, 2010-11 CWEA President & Executive Committee Chair
I am pleased to announce the opening of nominations for the 2011 CWEA Board of
Directors positions. Your local section and committee officers will have received the
Executive Committee request for nominations for CWEA Directors and Officers by the
time you receive this notice. However, to broaden the notification, this request is going
out to the CWEA membership. Below is a summary of the nomination process – and how
you can become involved in selecting your leaders. See the CWEA website at
www.CWEA.org for more information. Follow the path: Member & Leader Resources/I’m
a Leader/I’d like to be a Leader/Join CWEA Board/Nomination Information. [Read more]
Watch and listen to the on-line State of the Association meeting hosted on May 4, 2010 by CWEA President Pei-Chin Low (MWH). Click the graphic below to launch the player.
The Northwest Environmental Training Center will offer a 2-day overview of California’s stormwater rules on October 6-7 in Sacramento.
Stormwater pollution from both point and non-point sources pose serious ecological, economic and social risks. Stringent regulations regarding pollution sources help reduce these risks. This course provides an overview of California’s stormwater regulations, including the General Industrial Stormwater Permit, the General Construction Stormwater Permit, Phase I and II municipal permitting, and programs addressing non-point source pollution like Confined Animal Feeding Operations and the Irrigated Lands Program. The course will also address the federal regulation of point and non-point pollution. The history and origin of each of the permits will be discussed, and the basic requirements of each permit will be outlined.
Find out more and Register Online
The National Biosolids Partnership will conduct September 22 free webcast on the topic, Combined Heat and Power Generation Opportunities at Wastewater Treatment Facilities. Combined heat and power (CHP) projects are becoming more and more popular at wastewater treatment facilities. Evidence of this enthusiasm for CHP projects was on display at WEF’s most recent Residuals and Biosolids Specialty Conference held in Savannah, GA. This webcast will bring together plant operators, utility managers, consultants, engineers, equipment/process vendors, regulators, and academics interested in learning about the state of the practice and opportunities for combined heat and power generation from wastewater treatment plant operations and the various technologies to achieve that objective.
Join NBP for the third in a series of “no charge” quarterly webcasts based on critical biosolids technical topics. The webcast will be held on September 22 from 2:00 – 4:00 pm EDT. Online Registration. More information. Last Day to register is Monday, September 20, 2010. There will be professional development hours (PDH) offered for registrants requiring these training credits. Webcast login instructions and call-in instructions will be sent to all registrants just prior to the webcasts along with instructions on downloading the PDF copies of the power point presentations.
Speakers:
- John Willis – (Brown and Caldwell, Atlanta, GA) – Overview of Technology Options for CHP – Discussion of Engines, Combustion Turbines, Microturbines, Fuel Cells, and Boiler-Steam Turbine Systems
- Dan O’Brien – (Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, Boston, MA) MWRA’s Deer Island Heat First-Power Second CHP with Boilers and Steam Turbines
- Srinivas Jalla – (Gwinnett County, GA) – Making the Case for a CHP Project in Gwinnett County, GA
- Dale Doerr – (Sheboygan, WI) – Sheboygan, WI’s Journey to Energy Independence Experience with CHP
LABS has posted a new set of videos on CWEA’s YouTube site. The hour-long six-part series is a recording of its April dinner meeting, which featured Sam Espinoza from the LA Sanitation Districts of LA County speaking about wastewater collection system operation and maintenance.
Comment on this post and let us know what you think. Does your workplace allow access to YouTube? Are the videos useful for information sharing? Want to provide footage of your events or tours of your facility?
From Hugh Logan, CWEA SWRCB Advisory Committee Representative
The State Water Resources Control Board’s Advisory Committee, comprised of nine members from various stakeholder and industry groups, provides feedback to the Office of Operator Certification on regulation updates, reviews operator exams, and gives suggestions for continuing improvement. Hugh Logan, of the South Bayside System Authority, and Chris Berch, of the Inland Empire Utilities Agency, represent CWEA.
The State Office of Operator Certification (OOC) Staff hosted the Advisory Committee July 21st in Sacramento and presented numerous items for discussion. [Read more]
Earlier this month, Tri-TAC (made up of CWEA, CASA and the League of CA Cities) commented on the State Water Resources Control Board’s Preliminary Draft Policy for Whole Effluent Toxicity Assessment and Control.The Policy is based upon the EPA’s recently released Test of Significant Toxicity (TST). The
overarching concern is that use of the TST will lead to numerous “false positive” results, where non-toxic discharges and receiving waters are incorrectly identified as toxic. This, in turn, will lead to the wasting of significant State and Regional Water Board and publicly owned treatment works’ resources to respond to non-toxic, false positive indications of toxicity. Taken to its logical conclusion, the Policy could also ultimately lead to inappropriate use of public funds to provide unnecessary treatment plant upgrades based on non-existent biological community impacts. Tri-TAC believes that numeric limits for low levels of chronic toxicity are inappropriate, as low-level chronic toxicity has not been linked to instream biological impacts, and that there are significant technical problems with the TST methodology.
At its July meeting, CWEA LABS presented an overview of Los Angeles County’s Stormwater Monitoring programs. The featured speaker was Oliver D. Galang, P.E., Section Manager with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works’ Watershed Management Division. Oliver described the Los Angeles County’s existing National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Stormwater Program and provided an update of efforts to modernize and expand these into a systemwide water quality monitoring system. [Read more]
