Exploration & Analysis

In the exploration and analysis arena, the Clean Water America Alliance seeks to identify, explore, and analyze issues of critical importance to the nation’s ability to provide clean and safe waters to future generations such as watershed planning and management; the challenges presented by climate change and infrastructure sustainability; and, the promise presented by green cities.
 

Alliance Hosts First National Dialogue on an Integrated Water Policy

The Clean Water America Alliance (CWAA) hosted its first National Dialogue on an Integrated Water Policy: Urban Water Sustainability, on Sept. 14-15, bringing together nearly 30 leaders and experts in the clean water community to discuss urban water sustainability and how to meet the nation’s growing demands despite increasingly stressed water resources. It is well-recognized that the United States faces increasing challenges that threaten its ability to provide adequate supplies of clean and safe water to meet the competing demands of energy production, agriculture, and water, wastewater, and stormwater management. Population growth, climate change, aging infrastructure, and new regulatory requirements all present complex but interwoven challenges that are best addressed through an integrated national policy.

Participants in the National Dialogue included a broad range of the “best and brightest” from across the water sector, including representatives from the activist community, state water authorities, the federal government, municipal water and wastewater agencies, engineering firms, academia, industry, green infrastructure interests, and others.

The Dialogue was facilitated and chaired by two former assistant administrators of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), LaJuana Wilcher, who also served as secretary of the Kentucky Environmental and Public Protection Cabinet facilitated the session. Benjamin Grumbles, former EPA assistant administrator for water and current director of the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, served as chair. The discussion quickly focused on the need for a holistic approach that would break down bureaucratic silos and integrate often divergent statutes and policies for wastewater, drinking water, and stormwater.

“This unprecedented event will help us identify the barriers that keep us from establishing a holistic solution to our growing water resource challenges,” Dick Champion Jr., chairman of the CWAA board and director of the Independence, Mo., Water Pollution Control Department, said. “We need to change the paradigm, which will include changes to our laws and regulations that often trap us in our old way of thinking.”

A report summarizing the Dialogue is available for download. CWAA’s follow-up Dialogue is expected to take place in the spring of 2010.