Photo Credit: Lucien Gassie, Wyoming Sanitary Survey Rule Manager. Photo taken near Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Each year, every Wyoming and Region 8 Tribal community public water system (PWS) must prepare and distribute a CCR to its customers and send a copy of the CCR to the US Environmental Protection Agency, Region 8 (EPA). The system must also provide a signed certification regarding the contents of the report and its distribution. Due dates for these requirements are listed below. 

July 1st - Final date for all community public water supply systems to distribute a CCR to their consumers, as noted below and to submit a copy to the EPA. 

October 1st - Final date to submit a certification of report content and distribution to the EPA. 

New requirements beginning this year (for 2024 CCRs due in 2025): 

1. Lead and copper: the 90th percentile concentration of the most recent round(s) of sampling (if your system completed two rounds of sampling then the report needs to include both 90 percentile values), the number of sampling sites exceeding the action level, and the range of tap sampling results [141.153 (d)(4)(vi)]. 

2. Update lead educational statements for all CCRs [40 CFR 141.154(d)(1)].

Lead can cause serious health effects in people of all ages, especially pregnant women, infants, and young children. Lead in drinking water is primarily from materials and components associated with service lines and home plumbing. [NAME OF UTILITY] is responsible for providing high quality drinking water and removing lead pipes but cannot control the variety of materials used in plumbing components in your home.

¹This is a lead and copper rule requirement and can be found in the CFR version effective on April 26, 2024, and reflects the amendment published at 89 FR 32746

On May 20, 2025, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced $30.7 million in grant funding to provide training and technical assistance that will improve water quality in small and rural communities across the country. This support helps ensure that every American has access to clean and safe water and advances the goals of Administrator Lee Zeldin’s “Powering the Great American Comeback” initiative.

“Small and rural communities are the backbone of our country and they face unique challenges when it comes to ensuring clean and safe water,” said EPA Senior Advisor Jessica Kramer. “EPA is committed to assisting small and rural communities with improving water quality, protecting health, bolstering economic opportunities and protecting water resources. This $30 million in funding for technical assistance will help communities address their unique needs.”

On May 22, 2025, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a memorandum clarifying the specific and limited role that states and tribes play in the federal licensing and permitting processes under Clean Water Act (CWA) section 401. Through the memorandum, the agency is reiterating its longstanding position that states and Tribes must utilize section 401 only for its statutory purpose – to protect water quality. 

“Under the last Administration, certain states attempted to leverage the Clean Water Act to undercut projects that would boost national and regional development and unleash American energy resources,” said EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. “With this memorandum, EPA is reinforcing the limits on Clean Water Act section 401 certification to support energy, critical mineral, and infrastructure projects that are key to economic growth and Power the Great American Comeback.”

WaterISAC and EPA have released the latest quarterly edition of the National Security Information Sharing Bulletin (ISB), developed for water and wastewater utilities. Each issue focuses on key security and resilience topics, including cybersecurity, physical security, and natural disasters.

As cyber actors increasingly target the water and wastewater sector, building a sector-wide security mindset has never been more urgent. This issue reinforces the vital role we all play in protecting our nation’s critical infrastructure. It also highlights several free government cybersecurity services that utilities are encouraged to consider. 

The ISB is a joint effort by the EPA Office of National Security and WaterISAC, with support from the EPA Office of Water and the Water Sector Coordinating Council. It aims to raise awareness and promote security and preparedness across the water and wastewater sector.

Risk-based water reuse management continues to gain traction throughout the U.S. This presentation will introduce the recent EPA report Risk-Based Framework for Developing Microbial Treatment Targets for Water Reuse, which describes the conceptual framework underpinning these approaches and provides a detailed discussion of current scientific assumptions for conducting the associated quantitative microbial risk assessments (QMRA). In addition to enabling calculation of new fit-for-purpose water treatment levels, it includes computed pathogen log reduction targets (LRTs) across a variety of municipal and onsite reuse configurations. Implementation considerations, key sources of uncertainty, and future research needs are also identified with an emphasis on removal crediting processes.

The Water Contamination Incident Remediation Plan (WaterCIRP) is a step-by-step tool designed to assist drinking water and wastewater systems in the aftermath of a contamination incident. Sections of the plan detail how remediation actions can be implemented, monitored, and evaluated for effectiveness.

This free, one-hour webinar covers an overview of the WaterCIRP and how it can be used, in addition to a hands-on walkthrough to demonstrate use of the plan. 

Strategies for understanding the human health impacts of exposure to environmental and industrial chemicals increasingly incorporate more new approach methods (NAMs). However, building confidence in using information derived from NAMs requires a multifaceted approach that demonstrates the reproducibility, fitness-for-purpose, human relevance, and associated uncertainties of these approaches. In some regulatory jurisdictions, statutory and policy language requires comparisons of performance between the new approach and the established testing methods.