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Governor Newsom Establishes Broad Environmental Goals Through Executive Orders Governor Gavin Newsom has issued several Executive Orders in recent weeks focusing on climate change mitigation and the environment. Some of these initiatives have the potential to impact California’s wastewater community. Earlier this month, the Governor signed an Executive Order, EO-N-82-2020 which directs state agencies to [...]

President’s Executive Order Establishes USEPA Water Subcabinet Last week, the President signed an Executive Order (EO) on “Modernizing America’s Water Resource Management and Water Infrastructure.” The EO establishes an interagency federal Water Policy Committee, or Water Subcabinet, to better coordinate federal agencies’ water resource management and infrastructure policies and actions. The Subcabinet will be co-chaired [...]

USEPA Releases Financial Impact Tool The United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) has released the Water Utility COVID-19 Financial Impact Tool which can help drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater (“water”) utilities assess the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the utility’s cashflow. This tool leads water utilities through questions that can determine how their revenues, expenses, [...]

CASA Members Selected as Representatives on ELTAC Congratulations to Josie Tellers with the City of Davis and Sushmitha Reddy with the Inland Empire Utilities Agency on their respective appointments to serve as representatives on the Environmental Laboratory Technical Advisory Committee (ELTAC), an advisory body to the Environmental Laboratory Accreditation Program (ELAP). ELTAC provides technical and [...]

USEPA, CDC Boost Efforts to Detect Virus in Water Follow the link below for an article on USEPA’s efforts to continue analyzing wastewater in an effort to identify covid infection trends. The story reports that USEPA will be bolstering its efforts with the CDC and HHS to develop detection methods and analysis tools using wastewater. [...]

Microplastics Health Effects Webinar Series The Southern California Coastal Water Research Project (SCCWRP) is hosting a five session webinar series every Monday from October 19 to November 16, during which microplastics experts from around the world will summarize current knowledge and discuss the latest findings regarding microplastics toxicity. Representatives from the State Water Resources Control [...]

2020 Legislative Session Wrap-up The final deadline for Governor Newsom to sign or veto all legislation sent to him in 2020 was Wednesday, September 30. There were notably fewer bills in the mix this year after the COVID pandemic forced the legislature to pare down legislative business significantly. The Governor signed 457 bills and vetoed 56 in [...]

Congress Passes and White House Signs Bill Avoiding Government Shutdown Congress and the White House avoided a potential government shutdown this week, passing and enacting a Continuing Resolution (CR) (H.R. 8337) through December 11. A CR was necessary since the House and Senate were unable to pass fiscal year 2021 spending bills ahead of October [...]

It’s Time to Celebrate California Water Professionals Week This week, October 3-11 we are thrilled to celebrate the fourth annual California Water Professionals Appreciation Week! During this time, we are extra thankful for all of the men and women who continue to perform essential work to protect public health and the environment, 24/7, 365. We [...]

The Cost of Wipes on America’s Clean Water Utilities NACWA has released the long-awaited nationwide study on The Cost of Wipes on America’s Clean Water Utilities. CASA collaborated with NACWA and other water associations to produce this report which provides an estimate of the increased operating costs for utilities nationwide, with costs also estimated for [...]