NEWEA's January Update

Happy New Year! We hope everyone had a happy, healthy holiday season. We're looking forward to another year of water quality programming and connecting with our water industry colleagues and friends at our conferences and events.

Our first opportunity to meet in person is quickly approaching. Our 2023 Annual Conference & Exhibit is taking place January 22-25 in Boston. This year's program features 34 technical sessions, a keynote presentation by EPA Region 1 Administrator David Cash, the Student Poster Competition, and much more. Additional information about our program and links to register can be found below.

In addition to our Annual Conference, later this year we will be co-hosting our 2023 Spring Meeting with New York Water Environment Association (NYWEA) June 6-9, 2023 in Saratoga Springs, NY. We are now accepting abstract submissions for this event. More information can be found below.

Check out the rest of the newsletter for more on committee news and details on upcoming events. Until next newsletter, we hope everyone has a great month and stays healthy.

As always, we invite you to contact Jordan Gosselin at jgosselin@newea.org with committee news and updates you would like to share in future editions.

Registration is open for our 2023 Annual Conference & Exhibit! As our largest event of the year, this conference attracts over 2,200 engineers, consultants, scientists, operators, and academics for three days of technical sessions, poster displays, exhibits, and more.

View the preliminary program and register to attend.

Reserve an Annual Conference Exhibit Booth

Very limited exhibit space remains for our 2023 show! The Annual Conference features an exhibit hall spread over two floors of the conference venue and comprised of more than 200 booths. Exhibitors will be showcasing their latest water quality products and services. Attendees can earn Training Contact Hours (TCH) for visiting the Exhibit Hall.

View the Exhibit Prospectus and reserve your booth.

Reserve a Room for the 2023 Annual Conference

NEWEA's 2023 Annual Conference hotel room block at the Boston Marriott Copley Place is still open. Room rates start at $214 per night. Group rates are subject to date and space availability.

Reserve your room.

Submit an Abstract to the 2023 Spring Meeting

NEWEA and New York Water Environment Association (NYWEA) are now accepting submissions of abstracts for their jointly hosted 2023 Spring Meeting! This year's event will take place from June 6-9 at the Saratoga Hilton and City Center in Saratoga Springs, NY. NEWEA and NYWEA co-host their Spring Meeting every five years. This joint meeting consistently attracts more than 400 engineers, consultants, scientists, operators, and students and features a variety of technical sessions, a tour, exhibitor displays, and the Operations Challenge competition.

Submit an abstract by February 3.

InFlow Workshop Survey

WEF’s “Introducing Future Leaders to Opportunities in Water” (InFLOW) Program aims to bring diverse young leaders into the water industry by providing scholarships to students from historically underrepresented backgrounds to attend WEFTEC programming.

Several NEWEA Committees are hosting a workshop at NEWEA's 2023 Annual Conference to develop a sustainable and effective program in New England. The goal of this program is to enhance diversity and inclusion in the water industry and to recruit and retain young leaders to help develop the water workforce of the future.

Prior to this workshop, NEWEA is looking for your feedback. Please complete the brief survey to provide insights that will guide the workshop's discussion. Responses must be submitted by Friday, January 13, 2023.

Complete the survey.

Work for Water - New England

As one third of the water workforce becomes eligible to retire in the next ten years, the water industry faces a shortage of professionals qualified to perform mission-critical jobs of operating and maintaining our Drinking Water and Clean Water (wastewater treatment) facilities and infrastructure.

In response to this imminent crisis, all 14 New England and State professional Drinking Water and Clean Water associations have teamed up to fund New England Work for Water, an initiative focused on creating a sustainable workforce development organization for all New England water utilities. To accomplish this worthy goal, we need your help.

We are looking for every Drinking Water and Clean Water utility in New England to complete a survey that will provide the Steering Committee with data to develop the initiative plan and actions.

Data gathered in this survey will be analyzed by the Water Environment Federation (WEF) at the regional level; data provided from individual water organizations will not be shared. We appreciate every effort to submit the survey by February 15, 2023.

Complete the survey.

Build America Buy America (BABA) Survey

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Water issued Build America Buy America (BABA) guidance to require all water and wastewater infrastructure projects financed in whole or part with federal assistance, like the State Revolving Loan Fund (SRF), to procure U.S. manufactured products. The mandate requires Buy America compliance for the entire project; not the federally assisted portion of a project.

Under BABA, a project recipient is solely responsible for compliance. If the sourcing of U.S. manufactured products cannot be secured or costs increase more than 25%, a project recipient must seek a waiver from US EPA working through the state SRF agency. Discussions were recently held with Administration officials on the challenges of complying with BABA and how it jeopardizes the timely use of the historic Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s funding. These officials requested information that details the lack of a reliable supply of critical water infrastructure products manufactured in the U.S. This request for information could be used to fashion an extended compliance deadline for project recipients that would, in turn, expedite SRF project construction.

Please provide by January 20, 2023, an identification of the priority manufactured products (e.g., pumps, mixers, membranes, ozonation, and other products) that you believe:

would not be domestically available in reasonable quality or quantity and therefore could lead to construction delays of SRF water infrastructure; or
although domestically available in reasonable quality or quantity would impose significant project cost increases.

Complete the survey.

Ways to give

Make a donation online.
When you shop online, use Amazon Smile and choose New England Water Environment Assoc as your charitable organization.
Take a moment to share how NEWEA has impacted your career, education, and/or community.
Establish a legacy gift or memorial fund, or include NEWEA in your will.
Designate NEWEA for a Qualified Charitable Distribution. (If you have to take a Required Minimum Distribution from your retirement funds in 2023, you may be able to offset the tax impacts. Contact your financial advisor/IRA custodian for more information.)

New England Water Environment Association newea.org