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Federal COVID-19 Relief Efforts Restart Congress and the White House have reconvened efforts to pass COVID-19 relief before the year’s end. With just a month left in the congressional legislative schedule, three different efforts are being put forward. The first proposal is a bipartisan Senate relief package, entitled the American Worker Holiday Relief Act, that [...]

State Water Board Adopts Toxicity Provisions On December 1, the State Water Resources Control Board (State Water Board/SWB) adopted the toxicity provisions for inland surface waters (Provisions). These provisions have been developed over the course of several years with several rounds of input from CASA and other stakeholders in the clean water community. Over the [...]

Let’s Talk WBE CASA’s Communications Committee has been hard at work creating a Resource Toolkit to aid in agency outreach on Wastewater Based Epidemiology (WBE). Resources include sample social media posts, sample newsletter content, FAQs, a WBE logo, WBE fact sheet, press links to stories on WBE, and more. We hope that these tools are simple enough [...]

LACSD Expands Food Waste Recycling System to Produce Vehicle Fuel As part of its mission to convert waste into resources, the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts (Sanitation Districts) recently started up a biogas purification system to recycle food waste into renewable vehicle fuel. Food waste includes dinner scraps, spoiled fruit and vegetables from grocery stores [...]

Brave Blue World Documentary Streaming on Netflix The new Brave Blue World documentary, which paints an optimistic picture of how humanity is adopting new technologies and innovations for a sustainable water future, is available on Netflix. The Water Environment Federation (WEF) is a production partner for the film, which will now be available to an [...]

CSRMA Webinar: Cal/OSHA COVID-19 Emergency Temporary Regulations Join the California Sanitation Risk Management Authority (CSRMA) today, Wednesday, December 9, at 8:15am (PT) for a webinar: Office of Administrative Law Approves Cal/OSHA COVID-19 Emergency Temporary Regulations. On November 30, 2020, the Office of Administrative Law (OAL) approved Cal/OSHA’s proposed temporary emergency regulations regarding COVID-19 prevention and [...]

Giving Thanks With the holiday season approaching, CASA staff has been reflecting on the past year, and while 2020 did not turn out quite the way we anticipated, we are left in awe of all our CASA members. The wastewater sector truly shined in a time of despair, from being deemed essential workers and continuing [...]

Help us Welcome Alma Musvosvi to the CASA Family! We are pleased to welcome new staff member Alma Musvosvi to the CASA family! Alma will serve as Legislative and Regulatory Analyst for the association, filling the vacancy created when Jared Voskuhl was promoted to Manager of Regulatory Affairs.  In this position, Alma will support both [...]

Senate Appropriators Release FY2021 Spending Bills The Senate Committee on Appropriations has released the text of its spending bills for fiscal year (FY) 2021. The 2021 fiscal year officially started on October 1, however, on October 1, Congress passed a continuing resolution (CR) to fund the federal government at current FY2020 spending levels through December [...]

Proposed COVID-19 Emergency Regulation Cal OSHA is advancing emergency regulations to address COVID-19 in the workplace including at public agencies, such as wastewater treatment plants. The rules were unanimously approved by the Cal OSHA Standards Board on November 19th and now go to the Office of Administrative Law (OAL) for final approval. OAL has 10 days to [...]