G. Tracy Mehan III, the AWWA, executive director of government affairs, sent me this article written by him and Adam Carpenter and and Nancy Sullivan, all of
AWWA. It is in the January 2020 issue of JAWWA (https://doi.org/10.1002/awwa.1425).
Download Farm_Bill_Source_Water_Protection_One_Year_Later_JAWWA
What follows is a 'teaser' for this excellent one-pager.
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Congress passed the new farm bill just over one year ago. It
was a noteworthy event for source water protection, utilities,
and their partners in agriculture in that, for the first time,
the farm bill formally recognized the protection of sources of
potable water under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), not
just impaired waters, as under the Clean Water Act (CWA).
Funding from the Natural Resources Conservation Service
(NRCS) in the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is now
available to help agricultural producers protect source waters.
The new law also commits substantial resources to
this new imperative of source water protection, with 10%
of all dollars in the law’s conservation title (except the
Conservation Reserve Program) being allocated for this purpose.
This amounts to around US$4 billion over 10 years.
NRCS—both its headquarters and its state offices
led by state conservationists—has moved with alacrity
to identify critical source areas consulting with the US
Environmental Protection Agency staff, state agencies, and
where mobilized, AWWA volunteers. This important first
step will determine where millions of USDA dollars will be|
deployed in the service of source water protection as conceived
by AWWA’s G-300 standard.
Cutting to the chase...
You can find your NRCS state conservationist’s contact information by searching “NRCS State Conservationists” in any search engine and going to the “USDA Office Locator.”
G. Tracy Mehan III (tmehan@awwa.org) is the executive director of government affairs, Adam Carpenter is the manager for energy and environmental policy, and Nancy
Sullivan is the manager of Section services for AWWA.
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Enjoy!
"Water should be judged not by its history, but by its quality." - Dr. Lucas van Vuuren
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