DECEMBER ROUNDUP
Council members Kathryn Sorensen and Manny Teodoro, along with the Director of Navajo Nation Division of Natural Resources, Bitdah Becker, recently collaborated to comment on the monthly water bill. The three co-authors made the argument that community water systems form the foundation of public health, economic opportunity, and quality of life and bills should be paid accordingly by the communities that utilize the systems.
Water Advisory Insights

Council Members Chad Seidel and Manny Teodoro were recently featured in an AP News article that highlighted the challenges that small communities face related to resource allocation for water systems and subsequent access to clean drinking water. While water systems in larger cities tend to gain more attention and attract more resources, water providers serving smaller cities in the U.S. tend to violate twice as many health standards than bigger cities.
Council Member Joe Cotruvo recently submitted a letter to the editor of Chemical & Engineering News on the EPA’s drinking water health advisories for PFOA and PFOS, relative to the World Health Organization’s standards. Cotruvo, along with his co-authors Susan Goldhaber and Andrew Cohen, implores the EPA to “reexamine its assessments to provide a more credible scientific basis for its health advisories.”

Our nation’s water treatment systems were established decades ago and many systems require continued maintenance and investments to function properly. Check out how Council Member Chad Seidel explains how to prioritize our nation’s water infrastructure.
By the end of this year, the Environmental Protection Agency has promised to propose new national drinking water standards for PFOA and PFOS, two of the most studied pollutants among the thousands of compounds known as PFAS, or, more colloquially, “forever chemicals.”
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 News
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has awarded nearly $169 million in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding to New Jersey for water infrastructure improvements that will help communities access clean, safe and reliable drinking water, increase resilience, collect and treat wastewater to protect public health, clean up pollution, and safeguard vital waterways.
The bitter cold had left the region by Wednesday, but myriad broken pipes, disrupted municipal water systems and widespread aggravation remained. The myriad breaks and leaks have underscored the threat that extreme weather poses to local water systems. Those vulnerabilities have been exposed in recent years by winter storms, floods and hurricanes and are expected to keep intensifying because of climate change.
President Joe Biden's administration on Friday finalized regulations that protect hundreds of thousands of small streams, wetlands and other waterways, repealing a Trump-era rule that federal courts had thrown out and that environmentalists said left waterways vulnerable to pollution.
California's ongoing drought and a poor forecast is forcing the state's water management agency to cut back on its fresh water supply to nearly 27 million residents. The state's Department of Water Resources announced Thursday an initial allocation of 5% of requested supplies for 2023 for 29 local water agencies across California.
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