The Connecticut Water Works Association (CWWA) is an association of public water supply utilities that promotes state legislation and regulations to ensure reliable high-quality public water supplies to meet the needs of Connecticut’s residents and businesses. Why do you have to promote regulations for high-quality public water?
The laws and regulations governing the treatment and delivery of public water supplies are very complex and involve numerous scientific and technical issues.
For example, CWWA has worked on issues involving the oversight of water main installations, cross connection prevention, streamflow standards, water-supply planning and watershed land protection.
Our member utility companies have engineers, certified operators, lab technicians, planners and superintendents whose expertise helps educate lawmakers and public officials regarding how a particular bill or regulation will affect water quality, infrastructure, operations, rates, or service, etc.
How is Connecticut’s public water supply doing overall? What are some of the concerns your association has about our public water supply? Do you deal with issues like delivery infrastructure at all?
Overall, Connecticut’s public water supplies are among the best in the country. However, we cannot take our water supplies for granted or we could end up in a situation like the Southeast, which is still grappling with a severe drought. CWWA has long supported the development of a water resources management plan to ensure that Connecticut is positioned to guide water allocation in ways that will benefit future generations.
Although the state has taken some steps toward the development of a plan, progress has been slow, in large part because oversight of the state’s water resources is vested in four different agencies, resulting in disjointed policies.
Delivery infrastructure, replacing aging pipes and upgrading treatment plants, is clearly another top priority.
What advances are coming in terms of delivery of the public water supply? Does Connecticut have enough water to satiate its residents or do we need to import water?
Connecticut is very fortunate to have an abundant supply of quality water as well as a significant amount of precipitation, but we have to be careful not to take this for granted. Economic conditions like the current recession and weather conditions with much higher rainfall can pose extreme hardships for water utilities, which need sufficient revenues to operate their water systems and continue to supply water sufficient for public health and safety needs.
In addition, the state Department of Environmental Protection is in the process of developing streamflow regulations that could severely limit the amount of public water supplies available for public health, safety and industry in order to protect the state’s aquatic habitats.
As currently drafted, the regulations fail to balance the need to protect aquatic life with the need to provide for public health and safety.
What about water to meet the needs of business and our increasing high technology needs? Do we have enough water for commercial purposes, too?
A safe, reliable water supply is certainly critical to the day-to-day operations of existing businesses and to the viability of new commercial enterprises and residential developments.
In developing laws and regulations, such as the streamflow regulations, we need to make sure that such regulations recognize the importance of water to Connecticut’s economic vitality. Unfortunately, as currently drafted, the streamflow regulations may result in a moratorium on economic development in some communities.
Reader response:
“Thank you for your excellent interview with Tom West of the Southington Water Department. My organization, Rivers Alliance of Connecticut, frequently partners with water utilities on projects. Such projects include support for a robust network of USGS stream gages and groundwater monitors in the stateand a common effort to promote reform in statewide water management, which is, as Mr. West says, horribly fragmented.
We do differ on some points. For example, we believe that stream flow regulations are essential to preserving water in our rivers and streams, for fish, for fishing, and for the future. If every drop is allocated for water supply and wastewater, we will have no reserves and a diminished quality of life.
We emphasize protection and conservation. Contaminated aquifers are a brake on economic progress, and extremely costly to clean up. Southington itself has encountered this problem.
Conservation not only saves the resource for our environment, it lowers costs of delivery and costs of wastewater treatment. We would like to see utility revenues restructured so that customers are rewarded for using less water, and water utilities can collect increased fees from customers who waste water. (Mr. West mentions high rainfall as a problem. That is because customers are using less water for lawns and agricuture.)
Mr. West refers to streamflow regulations possibly resulting in “a moratorium on economic development in some communities.” As a property owner, I have personally experienced the costly effects of a water-related decline in economic development. We owned beautiful desert land in California, where there was enough groundwater to support some agriculture, some residences, some businesses, some wildlife. But overuse of water changed a promising future to an impoverished present. There is now not enough water for any purpose. We gave away our land to a land trust.
Saving the waters in our aquifers and streams is essential to the economic wellbeing of this state.” — Margaret Miner, Executive Director, Rivers Alliance of CT; Co-chair, Water Planning Council Advisory Group
