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EPA has issued a $34 million WIFIA loan to the Daly City Joint Powers Financing Authority to expand and modernize stormwater infrastructure in San Mateo County, reducing flood risk, improving water quality, and supporting long‑term regional resilience.

Federal agencies have issued an urgent national advisory warning that Iranian‑affiliated cyber actors are actively exploiting vulnerabilities in U.S. critical infrastructure — including drinking water and wastewater systems. Attacks have already caused operational disruptions, equipment tampering, and financial losses.

At the 2026 Council of Infrastructure Financing Authorities (CIFA) Summit, EPA Assistant Administrator Jess Kramer recognized 48 water infrastructure projects for excellence and innovation. All were financed in part through the State Revolving Fund (SRF) programs, highlighting how federal–state partnerships modernize aging systems, strengthen resilience, and expand access to safe, clean water.

EPA’s draft CCL 6 names microplastics and pharmaceuticals as priority drinking water threats for the first time, adds PFAS and other contaminants, and launches new health benchmarks to guide risk assessment and future regulation.

EPA and HHS launched major initiatives to confront microplastics, adding them and pharmaceuticals to CCL 6 for the first time, while ARPA‑H’s new STOMP program will measure, track, and remove microplastics to protect public health.

Chlorine, UV, and ozone are not competing technologies — they are complementary tools. Modern treatment plants increasingly use multi‑barrier disinfection trains that combine these methods to control pathogens, reduce chemical risks, and meet tightening regulatory and potable‑reuse demands.

For RO protection and dechlorination control, total chlorine monitoring is generally the more reliable and accurate method, especially at ultra‑low concentrations and in the presence of other oxidants. Free chlorine testing alone can be misleading and insufficient for membrane protection.

The EPA’s new Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions marks a long‑overdue shift away from decades of research that diagnosed symptoms but failed to deliver scalable, root‑cause solutions. The water sector must now pivot from chemical symptom management to biological, data‑driven restoration that eliminates hypoxia, stops internal nutrient loading, and restores ecological balance — with strict accountability for measurable results.

Eutrophication behaves like compound interest: the longer a utility waits to address internal nutrient loading, the faster costs escalate — both in the treatment plant and in the reservoir itself. The AWWA’s $2.4 trillion estimate dramatically understates the true financial liability because it excludes the compounding cost of degraded source water.

Reactive oxygen species can break down stubborn pollutants, and Argonne scientists have now developed a real‑time, ultra‑sensitive method to measure them, revealing which oxidants form on different electrodes and how efficiently they’re produced, advancing electrochemical water treatment.

New research links higher Parkinson’s risk to “younger” groundwater, highlighting how aquifer age, geology, and cyanobacterial exposure may shape environmental health. The article urges utilities to track broader markers and integrate water–health data.

PFAS are persistent “forever chemicals” found in water, soil, and air, linked to cancer and immune, developmental, and hormonal harm. EPA’s new rules set strict limits, require monitoring, and drive costly treatment upgrades as utilities work to remove and manage PFAS contamination.

Aeration is the largest energy consumer in activated sludge treatment — often 50–60% of total plant electricity use — yet most facilities still run blowers conservatively and continuously. This leads to widespread over‑aeration, which wastes energy, accelerates equipment wear, and provides no treatment benefit once DO exceeds biological demand.
Demand‑based DO control is the fastest, most cost‑effective way to reduce energy use without risking process stability.

Cavitation is fundamentally a system‑level hydraulic problem, not a pump defect. Low‑NPSH pump designs reduce the Net Positive Suction Head Required (NPSHr), allowing pumps to operate reliably under constrained inlet conditions, lowering installation costs, and extending equipment life.

Wastewater operators often need to make decisions within hours, but key lab tests—especially BOD—take five days. Explainable AI (XAI) bridges this gap by predicting water‑quality outcomes and showing operators why the model made its prediction, building trust in a field where traditional “black‑box” AI has been a non‑starter.

The PREDICT Act would expand wastewater surveillance to give communities earlier warning of infectious‑disease outbreaks, funding CDC grants, advanced testing, nationwide coverage, data transparency, and a national plan to strengthen wastewater‑based public health systems.

Nitrous oxide emissions in wastewater treatment are dominated by nitrifier and heterotrophic denitrification, and this study shows how to separate and measure each pathway under full‑scale conditions. By controlling ammonium, nitrite, dissolved oxygen, COD, and pH, researchers isolated the pathways and found the hydroxylamine route to be negligible. Low DO increased both pathways but especially nitrifier denitrification, while higher organics and lower pH amplified heterotrophic denitrification. These insights create a clearer framework for targeted N₂O mitigation strategies.

Crews tunneled 260 feet below Lake Ontario to build Toronto’s new Ashbridges Bay outfall. Southland Mole used compact Brokk demolition robots to safely drill upward to 50 risers, keeping workers out of danger during six months of intense overhead excavation.

Holiday Pines WRF in St. Lucie County earned a 2024 DEP Operations Excellence Award for its strong process control, dedicated operators, and recent expansion to 0.6 mgd. The team’s tight lab work, cross‑training, and SCADA oversight ensure high‑quality reclaimed water.

Municipalities are discovering that lined precast manhole systems, though more expensive upfront, deliver far lower life‑cycle costs than field‑applied coatings — breaking the cycle of recoating, bypassing, and emergency repairs that drain shrinking maintenance budgets.

Thames Water has introduced a smaller, 10‑cm “baby hedgehog” tool designed to navigate narrow sewer pipes and remove early‑stage wipe blockages before they escalate into flooding, infrastructure damage, or pollution incidents.

Industrial waste is placing severe, escalating strain on sewer systems—corroding pipes, causing chronic blockages, contaminating water bodies, threatening public health, and driving up municipal costs. Without stronger enforcement and sustainable waste management, communities face mounting environmental and financial risks.

Nunavut’s Rankin Inlet rebuilt its failing 1970s utilidor despite Arctic cold, permafrost, and extreme logistics. Dillon Consulting upgraded pumps, insulation, and manholes, preventing contamination and boosting capacity for reliable water and sewer service.

Raleigh’s Stormwater Department uses an annual student art and video contest to educate the public about stormwater runoff while empowering young people to become environmental storytellers. What began as a video contest in 2014 has evolved into a citywide creative program that blends art, science, and community engagement.

Rain gardens — also known as bioretention areas — are shallow, planted depressions that collect, absorb, and filter stormwater runoff. They improve water quality, reduce flooding, support native ecosystems, and offer an attractive, low‑maintenance form of green stormwater infrastructure.

Sewer systems are central to flood prevention, and drain technicians play a critical role by inspecting, maintaining, repairing, and upgrading stormwater infrastructure. Their work keeps pipes clear, boosts system resilience, and prevents sewage overflows during heavy rain.

St. Francis Public Schools earned MMSD’s Green Luminary Award after transforming three campuses with native plants, rain gardens, and bioswales. The upgrades manage 280,000 gallons of stormwater, reduce runoff to Lake Michigan, and create outdoor learning habitats.

Overhead power lines remain one of the deadliest hazards in utility and construction work — responsible for over 42% of electrical‑related workplace fatalities between 2011 and 2023. Most victims had no electrical safety training, meaning awareness and basic precautions could have prevented many deaths.

Excavation work in the water and wastewater industry carries many hazards, but striking a gas line is one of the most dangerous. Calling 811, respecting tolerance zones, and knowing how to respond to a damaged line are essential to preventing explosions, fires, injuries, and fatalities.

Winter is the ideal time to review SOPs—updating safety policies, improving communication, adopting digital tools, and checking field compliance—to ensure procedures stay accurate, understood, and consistently followed.

New York City’s rise as a global economic powerhouse is inseparable from its waterways — and from the decades‑long partnership between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Their joint dredging, deepening, and beneficial‑reuse programs keep one of the nation’s busiest ports safe, navigable, and economically competitive.

Chrome tanning loses large amounts of reusable chromium, which conventional precipitation turns into hazardous sludge. A modular recovery system using segregated streams, pretreatment, and regenerable silica‑gel adsorption captures Cr³⁺ for reuse, cutting waste and costs.

Terminating a problem employee is legally sensitive and operationally risky. Employers protect themselves by investigating thoroughly, documenting consistently, following policy, choosing one clear reason for termination, and conducting the process calmly, fairly, and with discipline.

NASSCO is mobilizing its members for the May 6, 2026 Washington, D.C., Fly‑In to advocate for stronger federal support for underground water, wastewater, and stormwater infrastructure — with a focus on funding, asset management, and standardized inspection practices.

Water agencies must design PFAS treatment systems that meet today’s MCLs but can expand tomorrow, because regulations are tightening, funding is limited, and early adopters are already discovering that “compliance today” can become “non‑compliance tomorrow.”

The Waterbury, Connecticut pipe failure wasn’t an accident — it was the predictable result of a financing model that allows infrastructure to decay until it collapses. Until capital planning is tied to accountability, mandatory maintenance, and long‑term investment discipline, communities will continue to face preventable failures with devastating social and economic consequences.

AWWA report projects U.S. drinking water infrastructure needs $2.1-$2.4T over 25 yrs, with a $56.6B annual gap. If funded by rates alone, household bills could double to $969 by 2050, straining affordability. Federal loan programs are key to moderating rate hikes.

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Boulder’s annual Children’s Water Festival brings 800–1,000 fourth- and fifth‑graders together for a full day of hands‑on water education, STEM learning, and environmental stewardship — helping kids understand where their water comes from and how they can protect it.

Mars once had abundant water, but Hubble and MAVEN data show it escaped to space as hydrogen and deuterium leaked from a turbulent, rapidly changing atmosphere. By tracking these escape rates, scientists reconstructed Mars’ wet past and gained insights that also help predict how Earth‑like planets evolve.

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