18th Annual EPA Drinking Water Workshop: Small System Challenges and Solutions
Date and Time
Monday, August 30, 2021 - Thursday, September 2, 2021
11:00 am - 5:30 pm EDT
Event Host
EPA's Office of Research and Development and Office of Water in partnership with the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators
Event Type
Conference
Description
Registration Open!
Registration is now open! Please review the workshop agenda prior to registering or have the agenda open for reference while registering.
Virtual Workshop
EPA's free annual drinking water workshop, held in partnership with the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators (ASDWA), will be held virtually again this year. The workshop will provide in-depth information and training on solutions and strategies for handling small drinking water system challenges with a focus on monitoring, distribution, source, and treatment topics. We look forward to providing networking and training opportunities in a virtual setting for a large audience.
Training and Networking Opportunities
The workshop speakers and group leaders are experts in their fields from EPA and other federal agencies, state and local agencies, tribes, academia, NGOs, and private industry. The workshop agenda includes the following networking and training opportunities:
- In-depth training
- Technical presentation sessions
- Breakout discussion groups for primacy agencies (State/Territory/Tribal)
- Plenary sessions with guest speakers
The technical sessions of the workshop will include presentations related to pathogens, PFAS, corrosion and lead, source water quality and quantity, disinfectants and disinfection byproducts, equity, resiliency and emergency response, contaminant removal, monitoring, risk communication, implementing innovative treatments, distribution system best practices, and system oversight. In-depth training options will include corrosion, modeling with EPANET, sanitary surveys, and managing legacy manganese in distribution systems.
Attendees
The workshop is primarily designed for state primacy agency staff responsible for drinking water regulations compliance and treatment technologies permitting; however, others benefit from participating, including territory, tribal, and local primacy staff, water system operators, academics, design engineers, technical assistance providers, and consultants.
Training Hours
Attendees will have the option of receiving training course credit certificates hours for each session listed on the agenda. Acceptance of certificates is contingent on state and/or organization requirements—EPA cannot guarantee acceptance. Closed-captioned recordings of the sessions will be posted to the online agenda for later viewing and as a training resource; certificates cannot be provided for viewing recordings.
NOTE: We are currently working with Ohio EPA to offer official course numbers.
Workshop History
2020 Workshop Recordings
All technical and training sessions from the 17th Annual Workshop (virtual) were recorded and are available for viewing.
View the agenda and recordings
The workshop attracted over 3,300 attendees from all 50 states (including 34 Tribes) and 4 territories. Over 120 state/territory environmental and health agencies and over 240 water utilities were represented.
To support the efforts of state and local officials to assist small systems, EPA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD) and Office of Water (OW), in cooperation with ASDWA, has held an annual workshop for the past 17 years to provide timely information on a variety of drinking water topics relevant to small systems. When the first workshop was held in 2004, it was by invitation only and designed as an educational opportunity for state staff working with small communities to install arsenic treatment technologies.
In 2008, at the encouragement of state agencies, the workshop was opened to the public and expanded to include multiple small drinking water system topics, including treatment technology options, infrastructure challenges and solutions, regulation implementation, compliance issues, and emerging contaminants.
In 2020, the workshop was held virtually for the first time in the workshop's history. See the highlight box on the right for details and session recordings.
