News
ACWA Again Joins Broad-Based Coalition Seeking Full Funding for USGS Stream Gauge Program
ACWA joined a broad-based coalition urging Congress to fully fund the USGS stream gauge program. USGS streamgage data helps to protect public safety, operate and maintain critical infrastructure, respond to floods and droughts, forecast water supplies, support hydropower and navigation, and sustain regional and national economic activity. The data generated by the stream gauge network is critical to water quality managers nationwide. The coalition is seeking $33 million for the Cooperative Matching Funds (CMF) Program to sustain cost-shared streamgages and partnerships with more than 1,500 state, tribal, regional, and local partners nationwide and $34 million for the Federal Priority Streamgage Network, reflecting a modest increase to account for inflation and rising operation and maintenance costs. Copies of the letters are available here.
EPA Releases Update on 5th CCL
Under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), EPA is required to decide whether or not to develop nationwide drinking water regulations for contaminants on the Agency’s Contaminant Candidate List (CCL). EPA is applying gold standard science in all aspects of Safe Drinking Water Act implementation, including a determination of which contaminants are on the CCL and in developing regulatory determinations. The fifth CCL, issued in 2022, identified 81 contaminants or groups of contaminants to evaluate. On March 17, 2026, the EPA issued a final determination that nine of these contaminants do not meet the criteria for regulation development established by SDWA. The decision for each of these nine contaminants is being made because they are not commonly found in drinking water at levels and at a frequency of concern. As a result, EPA will not develop regulations for: 2- aminotoluene, cylindrospermopsin, ethoprop, microcystins, molybdenum, permethrin, profenofos, tebuconazole, and tribufos. The contaminants included on the fifth CCL for which EPA is not making a regulatory determination are under consideration for inclusion in the forthcoming draft Sixth CCL. The draft CCL 6 will help prioritize funding, research, and information-collection to better understand the potential risks of these substances in drinking water while advancing the agency’s commitment to gold standard science. To learn more about this determination, please visit EPA’s regulatory determinations webpage https://www.epa.gov/ccl/regulatory-determination-5.
Regional Partnership Program: A Community-Led, Voluntary Approach
The Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP) and the National Rural Water Association (NRWA) released an analysis examining how voluntary regional partnerships can help strengthen water and wastewater systems serving small and rural communities. Drawing on decades of on-the-ground technical assistance and system data, the analysis shows how community-led regional collaboration, supported by trusted technical assistance providers, can strengthen long-term sustainability while preserving local governance, community identity and public accountability.
Key findings of the publication include the following:
- Rural utilities face significant infrastructure pressures. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that roughly $625 billion will be needed for drinking water infrastructure improvements in the coming decades, creating major challenges for small systems with limited financial and technical capacity.
- Regionalization is most effective when it is voluntary and community-led. This approach allows utilities to collaborate, share expertise and strengthen technical, managerial and financial capacity while preserving community identity.
- Regionalization includes multiple partnership models. Communities may pursue shared services, joint purchasing, contractual assistance, regional entities or voluntary consolidation depending on local needs.
- System size alone does not determine regulatory performance. National data shows that larger systems do not consistently outperform smaller systems in regulatory compliance.
Read the full publication here.
Strengthening State Agencies with Experienced Professionals
State environmental agencies are stretched thin. As federal and state programs continue to grow, many agencies must do more with the same or even fewer resources. The result can be missed deadlines, increasing backlogs, and staff who are struggling to keep up. New Experienced Workforce (NEW) Solutions offers a proven way forward. This 501(c)(3) national nonprofit connects state agencies with seasoned environmental professionals aged 55 and over. These experts bring decades of experience exactly when it is needed. They help fill critical work gaps, preserve institutional knowledge, and keep essential programs moving, all while remaining cost-effective for state budgets.
What NEW Solutions Participants Bring
- Administrative and program management support
- Scientific and technical expertise
- Engineering and regulatory knowledge
- Proven experience and flexibility
- Creative option for filing short/long term needs
When state agencies partner with NEW Solutions, they gain more than temporary help. They access a network of professionals who understand environmental work from the ground up and can begin contributing immediately. Learn how NEW Solutions can help your agency achieve its mission by visiting NEWsolutions.org/how-it-works or contacting Bridget Farley, Director of Programs at BFarley@NEWsolutions.org.
Looking for a meaningful encore to your state environmental career? Explore opportunities at NEWsolutions.org/jobs.
Association Updates
Notice – No Wrap the Week of March 23, 2026
During the week of March 23, ACWA will be hosting our Mid-Year Meeting and will not publish a Weekly Wrap. Look out for our next edition the week of March 30, 2026.
ACWA 2026 Mid-Year Meeting – View the Latest Draft Agenda!
Dates: March 25-26, 2026
Location: Alexandria, VA
View the updated draft agenda here.
There is still time to register! Register to the meeting here.
To reserve your hotel room, reach out to Annette Ivey.
Check our event webpage for more information.
2026 National Industrial Permitting Workshop – Deadlines Coming!
Dates: April 7-9, 2026
Location: Washington, DC
Agenda: 2026 National Industrial Permitting Workshop Agenda – 1/16/2026
Meeting Registration: Register to the meeting using this link. In-person registration will close today, March 20, 2026. Virtual registration will close on March 27, 2026.
Hotel Reservation: The room block for this workshop has closed. Please reach out to Lexy Bailey with questions regarding hotel reservation.
View more details here on our website.
2026 Water Quality Standards Workshop – Updated Draft Agenda Now Available!
Dates: April 21-23, 2026
Location: Little Rock, AR
Registration is open for the 2026 Water Quality Standards Workshop! This workshop will take place April 21-23, in Little Rock, AR. This workshop is a national meeting organized by ACWA for state staff involved in state water quality standards programs, as well as for both Regional and Headquarters-based U.S. Environmental Protection Agency managers and staff. The workshop will be held at the DoubleTree by Hilton Little Rock.
Registration is available here.
View the draft agenda here.
The workshop will be held at the DoubleTree by Hilton Little Rock. Reserve your hotel room here. The room block will close on March 30, 2026. ACWA does anticipate having travel support for state staff.
When available, more information can be found on ACWA’s events page.
ACWA 2026 Annual Meeting – Save The Date!
Dates: August 5, 2026 at 8:00 am – August 7, 2026 at 12:00 pm
Board of Directors will meet August 4, 2026.
Venue: The Eldorado Hotel and Spa, Santa Fe, NM
Check back here for more information regarding registration, lodging, and agenda.
Meetings and Webinars
Building Drought and Wildfire Resilience for Water Sector Utilities: Technical Assistance and Resources from EPA SWIFT
Date and Time: Wednesday, March 25, 2026, 1:00 – 2:00pm ET
REGISTER HERE
SWIFT’s experts can provide hands-on technical assistance to help your utility build resilience to drought and wildfire hazards through risk-informed project planning and investment. Learn about the SWIFT technical assistance process, explore online tools for understanding and assessing system risk to these hazards, and review resources for identifying resilient infrastructure projects.
EPA’s Strengthening Water Infrastructure for Tomorrow (SWIFT) initiative will be hosting a series of 1-hour virtual webinars in March, April, and May for a national utility audience (see below). They are listed on the Office’s Events Page.
EPA Nonpoint Source Technical Exchange Webinar
Date and Time: Wednesday, March 25, 2026, 1:00 – 2:30pm ET
REGISTER HERE
EPA will host a Nonpoint Source Pollution Technical Exchange Webinar on Wednesday, March 25, from 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm ET. This webcast will focus on Agriculture and Farmer Outreach.
Tips for Retaining a Happy, Healthy Water Workforce
Date and Time: March 26, 2026, 11-12 pm ET
REGISTER HERE
Water and wastewater professionals face significant pressures—long hours, emergency response, regulatory demands, and staffing challenges—that can take a toll on mental health. Smaller utilities often lack formal HR support or employee assistance programs, making mental health awareness and practical tools even more important. This session explores simple, easy-to-implement strategies to support co-workers, reduce stigma, and strengthen workplace culture. Participants will leave with practical steps and accessible mental health resources they can use right away to build a healthier, more resilient workforce.
EPA Tools & Resources Webinar: Freshwater Explorer 2.0
Date and Time: March 28, 2026, 3-4 p.m. ET
REGISTER HERE
EPA’s Freshwater Explorer is an easy-to-use, interactive web-based mapping tool for exploring freshwater data from streams, lakes, and groundwater wells in all 50 U.S. states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. It can be used by citizens and non-governmental organizations to better understand national and local water quality issues and to provide water quality information to help federal, state, territory, Tribal, and local partners make decisions about freshwater resources. Users can add spatial layers to explore associations between water quality measurements and natural and human geographical factors and any of the 10,000+ other available data layers accessible from the GeoPlatform that may affect water quality in the United States.
This webinar will show users how to perform geographical searches and visualize background and measured data for water quality parameters.
Webinar Series schedule and recordings
EPA Research to Support States
Quarterly NPDES Noncompliance Report (NNCR) Training
Date and Time: April 2, 2026, 1:00-2:00 PM EST
Register for this training on ZoomGov
This training focuses on the quarterly National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Noncompliance Report (NNCR) available on ECHO, which provides a comprehensive list of Clean Water Act violations and their resolutions to the public. It will provide an overview of what the quarterly NNCR is and why it was developed, background on the NNCR workgroup, violation types and violation details included in the report, and a demonstration to access the report on EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance History Online.
Annual NPDES Noncompliance Report (NNCR) Training
Date and Time: April 7, 2026, 2:30-3:30 PM EST
Register for this training on ZoomGov
This training focuses on the annual National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Noncompliance Report (NNCR) available on ECHO, which provides summary compliance and enforcement information for more than 450,000 permittees by state, tribe, and territory by federal fiscal year. It will provide an overview of what the annual NNCR is and why it was developed, background on the NNCR workgroup, metrics included in the reports, and a demonstration to access the report on EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance History Online.
EPA Tools & Resources Webinar: Virtual Beach
Date and Time: April 15, 2026, 3-4 p.m. ET
REGISTER HERE
To protect public health, beach managers need to continually assess the level of potentially harmful microbes in the water. However, traditional culture-based testing methods take about 24 hours to get results. This lag time prevents same-day, proactive decisions on beach closures, which could leave recreational swimmers susceptible to sickness or infection, or lead to unwarranted beach closures, thus incurring economic losses. EPA’s Virtual Beach (VB) software offers a solution. VB is a decision support tool that facilitates the development of statistical models of water quality at site-specific locations. It allows users to estimate any general response variable, such as microbial or blue-green algae concentrations, using commonly measured environmental data. Modeled water quality estimates can then be used to inform site-based management decisions, such as issuing swimming or shellfish harvesting advisories. This webinar will feature a live demonstration of the new version of Virtual Beach – ShinyVB – a browser-based application developed using the R-Shiny package. We will discuss how VB has been used to assist in advisory issuances in the Great Lakes states and to forecast water conditions using other recent case study examples.
Cybersecurity Refresher
Date and Time: April 15, 2026, 1-2 pm ET
REGISTER HERE
EPA’s Office of Water Emergency Response and Cybersecurity (OWERC) offers this refresher training to water and wastewater utilities to reinforce their foundational understanding of cybersecurity and how it applies to the water sector.
NNCR Advanced Training: Effluent Exceedance Violations
Date and Time: April 16, 2026, 2:00-3:30 PM EST
Register for this training on ZoomGov
This training focuses on effluent exceedance violations on the quarterly National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Noncompliance Report (NNCR), which provides a comprehensive list of Clean Water Act violations and their resolutions to the public. It will provide an overview of when effluent exceedance violations are generated, criteria for assigning Category I versus II noncompliance, resolution of effluent exceedance violations, and a demonstration of searching and filtering effluent exceedance violations on the quarterly NNCR.
This is an advanced training and assumes you have attended or watched a recording of the quarterly NNCR training before attending.
NNCR Advanced Training: DMR Reporting Violations
Date and Time: April 21, 2026, 2:00-3:00 PM EST
Register for this training on ZoomGov
This training focuses on DMR reporting violations on the quarterly National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Noncompliance Report (NNCR), which provides a comprehensive list of Clean Water Act violations and their resolutions to the public. It will provide an overview of when DMR reporting violations are generated, criteria for assigning Category I versus II noncompliance, resolution of DMR reporting violations, and a demonstration of searching and filtering DMR reporting violations on the quarterly NNCR.
This is an advanced training and assumes you have attended or watched a recording of the quarterly NNCR training before attending.
The Safe Drinking Water and Clean Water Acts: Connecting Water Regulations to Laboratory Practice
Date and Time: April 22, 2026, 2-3 pm ET
REGISTER HERE
The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) and the Clean Water Act (CWA) are two landmark federal statutes that protect water supplies from naturally occurring and man-made contaminants. These regulations are essential for safeguarding public health by preventing waterborne illnesses and ensuring communities have access to safe, clean water. Environmental laboratories play a critical role in enforcing the SDWA and CWA to protect communities from contaminated water, as they conduct testing and monitoring required for maintaining water quality standards and detecting pathogens. This webinar will provide information about the history of the SDWA and CWA, associated regulations and the relationship to the work of environmental laboratories.
Contact Nikita Kheni for more information.
NNCR Advanced Training: Schedule Violations
Date and Time: April 30, 2026, 1:30-2:30 PM EST
Register for this training on ZoomGov
This training focuses on schedule violations on the quarterly National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Noncompliance Report (NNCR), which provides a comprehensive list of Clean Water Act violations and their resolutions to the public. It will provide an overview of when schedule violations are generated, criteria for assigning Category I versus II noncompliance, resolution of schedule violations, and a demonstration of searching and filtering schedule violations on the quarterly NNCR.
This is an advanced training and assumes you have attended or watched a recording of the quarterly NNCR training before attending.
Building Cyber Resilience Using EPA’s Water and Wastewater Cybersecurity Incident Response Plan Template
Date and Time: April 30, 2026, 1-2:30 pm ET
REGISTER HERE
EPA invites water sector professionals to learn about its new Drinking Water and Wastewater Systems Cybersecurity Incident Response Plan Template. This fully customizable template is designed to help all utilities prepare for, respond to, and recover from cybersecurity incidents affecting both information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) systems.
NNCR Advanced Training: Single Event/Other Violations
Date and Time: May 5, 2026, 3:00-4:00 PM EST
Register for this training on ZoomGov
This training focuses on single event/other violations on the quarterly National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Noncompliance Report (NNCR), which provides a comprehensive list of Clean Water Act violations and their resolutions to the public. It provides an overview of when single event/other violations are generated, criteria for assigning Category I versus II noncompliance, resolution of single event/other violations, and a demonstration of searching and filtering single event/other violations on the quarterly NNCR.
This is an advanced training and assumes you have attended or watched a recording of the quarterly NNCR training before attending.
Water Cybersecurity Assessment Tool (WCAT) Webinar
Date and Time: May 13, 2026, 1-2:30 pm ET
REGISTER HERE
EPA’s Office of Water Emergency Response and Cybersecurity (OWERC) will demonstrate how to use EPA’s Water Cybersecurity Assessment Tool (WCAT) to conduct cybersecurity assessments at water and wastewater systems.
How Water Sector Utilities are Building Resilience to Natural Hazards: Utilities Recount their Engagement with EPA SWIFT Technical Assistance
Date and Time: May 20, 2026, 1-2 pm ET
REGISTER HERE
Join US EPA’s Strengthening Water Infrastructure for Tomorrow (SWIFT) initiative to learn how water sector utilities are benefitting from natural hazard risk assessment technical assistance. The technical assistance provided by SWIFT’s experts is tailored to meet the needs of each utility request, from improving the understanding of natural hazard impacts to their system to quantifying the potential reductions in risk that specific projects can deliver. Hear directly from utility representatives across the country that have engaged in the process to build system resilience to various natural hazards.
Job Opportunities
Environmental Analyst (Quality Assurance)
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Closing Date: March 20, 2026
To apply, send a cover letter and resume by March 20th, 2026 to jobs@iec-nynjct.org . Please reference position number 26-001 in the e-mail subject line.
Environmental Program Specialist (Office Administrator)
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Closing Date: March 20, 2026
To apply, send a cover letter and resume by March 20th, 2026 to jobs@iec-nynjct.org. Please reference position number 26-003 in the e-mail subject line.
IEC Seasonal Intern, 2026
Location: Brooklyn, NY, and field locations throughout Metropolitan New York area
Closing Date: March 20, 2026
To apply, send a cover letter and resume to jobs@iec-nynjct.org by March 20th, 2026. Please reference position number 26-002 in the e-mail subject line.
Emergency Response Unit Supervisor
Location: St. Paul, MN
Closing Date: March 26, 2026
As the Emergency Response Unit supervisor at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, this position exists to supervise, implement, and oversee the emergency response program. This program is responsible for receiving, triaging, and distributing Minnesota Duty Officer reports, serving as the gateway to the MPCA. Further, the program leads and responds to all environmental emergencies at the MPCA, coordinating and collaborating with all MPCA programs and functional areas. The program has response staff in the following
offices: Brainerd, Detroit Lakes, Duluth, Mankato, Rochester and St. Paul. The program is a 24/7 operation with staff assigned on call responsibilities after hours and weekends. This position oversees the daily operations and preparedness of the staff. The position coordinates and collaborates with other state agencies, local government, federal agencies and tribal partners.
For more information and to apply, visit Minnesota Careers.
Environmental Analyst or Engineer – Training and Technical Assistance Specialist
Location: Lowell, MA
Closing Date: Open until filled
To apply, email your cover letter, resume, and a brief writing sample to jobs@neiwpcc.org. Please reference #26-Lowell-001 in the email subject line. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, accepting applications until the position is filled. A full position description and benefits may be viewed at: https://neiwpcc.org/about-us/careers.
Watershed Management Section Manager
Location: Thurston County – Lacey, WA
Closing Date: Continuous
If you’re interested in applying for this position or reading additional information, please follow this link:
Watershed Management Section Manager (WMS2)
Be sure to check out other opportunities on ACWA’s Job Opportunities page.
