SEPTEMBER ROUNDUP
America’s Water Infrastructure Needs Help
Learn from Council Member Chad Seidel as he explains why America’s water infrastructure needs major improvements.
Our nation’s drinking water infrastructure is in desperate need of attention. This is not breaking news. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave our underground water system a C- and their economic study found that the annual drinking water and wastewater investment gap will eventually grow to $434 billion by 2029. Visit our Water Infrastructure page to learn more.
Water Advisory Insights
Attention and money focused on the next thing is attention and money taken away from the thing that is most impactful—the thing that best protects public health for the greatest number of people—investment in aging water infrastructure. 

New contaminants’ health risks must be substantiated if they are to take resources away from long-standing contaminant risks. Replacing aging infrastructure isn’t glamorous and doesn’t have the allure of addressing a contaminant with a pseudonym in air quotes, but it is critical to protecting drinking water and public health in the long term.

Council Member Manny Teodoro talked to Water & Wastes Digest’s Bob Crossen about why competing priorities can create challenges for small utilities as well as his perspective on utility capacity.
Water News
New York Times: How New Mexico's Largest Wildfire Set off a Drinking Water Crisis

For communities across the wildfire-weary West, Las Vegas has become a warning sign, showcasing the damage that can be inflicted on delicate water ecosystems by megafires and other climate-charged disasters, and putting another obstacle in the way of recovery. Protecting Las Vegas’s drinking water will be difficult and expensive — with federal, state and local resources all being drawn on to shore up the system. The cost further highlights the demands that climate change is placing on communities across the country, as they deal with an onslaught of more intense and frequent droughts, storms, wildfires and other disasters.
The Washington Post: The Mississippi water crisis is the tip of the global disaster to come
Jackson’s water crisis has been rightly described as a “climate justice wake-up call.” Decades of neglect led to a deteriorating water system that reached a breaking point this summer. When torrential rains caused a flood near Jackson’s largest water treatment plant in August — coming on top of staffing shortages and equipment failures — a major pump was damaged, a chemical imbalance was created, and the plant shut down. With that, the city of more than 160,000 residents lost access to safe drinking water.
LA Times: L.A. is conserving water at record levels, but it’s not enough as drought worsens

Los Angeles residents conserved water at an impressive pace in August, with that month’s usage dropping below a record low set during the previous drought. But it’s becoming clear that this alone is not going to be enough. The crisis on the Colorado River, a key source of water for Southern California, is expected to bring painful cuts to supplies in the coming month.
National Law Review: The EPA Proposes to List PFAS as ‘Hazardous Substances’ under CERCLA
On August 26, 2022, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a “Pre-Publication Notice” that proposes to list two PFAS compounds as “hazardous substances” under the “Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation & Liability Act” (CERCLA), also known as the “Superfund” law. The EPA plans to publish a formal “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” regarding its plans to list these PFAS compounds as hazardous substances under CERCLA in the Federal Register within the next several weeks, and once it is published, there will be a 60-day public comment period.
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