NEWEA is pleased to announce our 2022 Spring Meeting, which will take place May 22-25 at the Mount Washington Resort in Bretton Woods, NH. This three-day event will feature technical sessions, the Operations Challenge, Golf Tournament, and more and is a great opportunity to meet and network with your water industry colleagues in a beautiful setting. Additional event information, including the Preliminary Program, registration, and exhibit enrollment, will be available in the coming month.

The hotel room block for this event is now open! Join us at the beautiful Mount Washington Resort, a historic hotel that offers grand amenities and views of the majestic Presidential Range. Reserve your room online or call the Mt. Washington Resort central reservations department at 1-800-843-6664. You must reference “NEWEA Spring Meeting” room block in order to receive the discounted room rate.

The Water Environment Federation is offering scholarships to Young Professionals interested in attending the National Water Policy Fly-In, cohosted by WEF, National Association of Clean Water Agencies, Water Research Foundation, and WateReuse Association. The Fly-In is part of Water Week 2022, Washington, DC. This will be an excellent opportunity for YPs to participate in the highest levels of policy advocacy before Congress and the Administration, as well as to build professional connections with water professionals from across the nation also attending the National Water Policy Fly-In.

If you are interested in attending, and are a YP, WEF will provide you with a $400 scholarship and cover the cost of your registration. Awardees are responsible for their own travel, accommodations and any additional expenses.

The application window to apply will be March 1 - 20, 2022, with awardee notification before March 28, 2022. Please visit www.wef.org/advocacy/water-week to apply.

The next conference call highlighting COVID-19 issues, hosted by Massachusetts' Department of Environmental Protection, will take place on Wednesday, March 9 from 9:00-10:00AM.

These calls are intended for clean water professionals to address areas of greatest concern, review the available resources, and identify areas where follow-up is required.

Tell us how your community or business improved your region’s ability to deliver stormwater services in 2021 and you could win a Stormy Award! The award program is intended to identify simple, imaginative, unique and inventive stormwater ideas in one of three categories:

The submission period has been extended to April 1, 2022. Winners will be announced in May 2022.

Please send any questions to nestormwater@gmail.org

The nation's top environmental regulator visited Saco, ME last month to discuss the recent federal infrastructure bill and how this could contribute to addressing water quality and climate projects. EPA administrator Michael Regan and Maine Rep. Chellie Pingree toured the Saco Water Resource Recovery facility with NEWEA member and facility director Howard Carter to see how climate change and sea level rise is affecting the facility.

“We’ll be completely inundated by the end of the century, but we’ll have to deal with storm surge flooding long before that,” Carter said. “Think about what raw sewage discharges would do to our fishermen, our clammers, our beaches. A lot of people make their living from our waters.”

Regan encouraged facilities like Saco to apply for some of the $50 billion in federal funding for water projects included in last year's infrastructure bill.

To learn more, read the article and watch the video covering this facility visit.

WaterISAC and the USEPA are alerting the water and wastewater systems sector to new information regarding a potential cyber threat to United States critical infrastructure. All water and wastewater system owners and operators should read this alert and the advisories linked below and adopt the recommended mitigation actions if needed.

In an Intelligence Brief issued on January 23, 2022, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) stated, “We assess that Russia would consider initiating a cyber attack against the Homeland if it perceived a US or NATO response to a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine threatened its long-term national security. Russia maintains a range of offensive cyber tools that it could employ against US networks—from low-level denials-of- service to destructive attacks targeting critical infrastructure.”

Due to these current events, WaterISAC and the USEPA strongly encourage water and wastewater system owners and operators to maintain a heightened awareness for possible intrusions into their operational networks and to prepare to maintain critical operations if process control networks are disabled.

Review the Advisory from WaterISAC and USEPA for tactics, techniques, and procedures used by Russian and Russian state-sponsored proxies and, where necessary, adopt the recommended mitigation actions to reduce risk from and build resilience to potential attacks. 

New England Water Environment Association newea.org