System Water Quality Committee

Goals and Objectives

The activities of the System Water Quality Committee meld nicely with the Section’s Strategic Plan.  The past, present and planned goals for this committee can be directly linked to 6 of the 8 Goals of the Section as follow:

Goal A- Achieve a high level of public confidence in drinking water and water utilities
We will continue to promote the sale of the Committee’s “Handling Water Quality Complaints” procedural manual to assist utilities in dealing with the many problems faced with delivered water quality in a courteous and effective manner. 

This Committee has also just published an update of the old “Distribution System Bacteriological Sampling Control and Guidelines” to include all of the types of sampling that utilities may encounter in maintaining compliance with SDWA.

Goal B- Promote environmentally responsible water resources management
The next publication that will emerge from this Committee will be an update of the “Distribution Main Flushing and Cleaning” handbook.  This will include dechlorination of flush water and protection of receiving streams from sediment and debris during the flushing process.

Goal C- Achieve technological progress through information transfer
We will continue to conduct annual workshops and sponsor technical sessions on the contemporary and topical System Water Quality Issues at both stand-alone workshops as well as the Spring and Fall Conferences.

Goal D- Promote effective legislative/regulatory activities
This Committee will continue to provide comments on new regulatory items during the public review process. 

Goal F- Improve section’s effectiveness
We happen to be one of the more interesting committees within the Section.  Just ask any of the members.  Our commitment to bringing the best quality water to the public reflects positively on the effectiveness of the Section.   We pride ourselves as being “vanguards of public health”.

We work with the Section’s educational staff to promote effective outreach through publications and workshops.

Goal G- Improve small systems regulatory compliance
We are presently working with the Source Water and Water Treatment Committees to bring a “Source To Tap” Workshop to advance understanding of issues relating to the purveyance of drinking water.  We will be focusing on smaller operations.