In October 2019, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a proposed rule that significantly improves the actions that water systems must take to reduce lead in the nation’s drinking water. The goal of the new rule has 6 focus areas:
1) Identifying the most impacted areas
2) Strengthening drinking water treatment
3) Replacing lead service lines (LSL)
4) Increasing system reliability
5) Improving communication to the customer
6) Better protecting schools and day care facilities that may or may not be covered by the Safe Drinking Water Act.
The KnowYourH2O Team can work with local water authorities, state health departments, certified laboratories, water quality professionals, and the local schools and day care facilities to meet this challenge.
For the Water Authorities, we can assist with identifying impact areas, provide a field reporting platform to track field observations and field water quality measurements, implementing a web interface to interact with customers and users, and integrate other available data for the system or region.
For Health Departments and regulatory agencies, our platform can you used to manage geospatial data and information in a proactive and a dynamic environment and provide a direct interface with certified laboratory data, project or facility manager, track sampling, system repairs, and system upgrades, and track the implementation of the sampling, testing, and remediation plan.
For the community, the interactive platform provides a tool to obtain and send information to the client and user and the system would allow the user to submit event based observations, such as: discolored or dirty water or other related issues in a secure and trackable manner. Because the platform would permit the integration of other types of environmental data, the platform can display to the customer other secondary environmental data that is available for the region. This approach provides a proactive means of working with your community and proactively addressing users concerns and issues and helps build confidence with the community.
A target area of this outreach is educating and informing the public on issues related to lead in the environment. Schools, daycare facilities, and many private systems may or may not be regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act. “EPA estimates that approximately 8,000 schools and child care facilities maintain their own water supply and are regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). There are approximately 98,000 public schools and 500,000 child care facilities not regulated under the SDWA. (Read article on EPA's website Lead in Drinking Water in Schools and Childcare Facilities)
The EPA developed the 3T’s for Reducing Lead. The 3T’s- Training,Testing, and Taking Action and providing tools for schools, childcare facilities, states, and water systems to implement voluntary lead in drinking water testing programs and the EPA developed the 3T’s tool box has 6 Modules and the 3 T’s manual.
Module 1 Communications
Module 2 Learning About Lead
Module 3 Planning the 3T’s Program (Training, Testing and Taking Action)
Module 4 Developing a Sampling Plan
Module 5 Conducting Sampling and Interpreting Findings
Module 6 Remediation of System and Best Practices
Module 7 Record Keeping
Across all 7 modules and the 6 focus areas, our team can assist your group to meet or exceed your project objectives. The KnowYourH20™ team has developed a platform that can assist with implementing your sampling plan, managing your data and information, providing target information to your community, and working with your team to assist with your project short-term and long-term goals and objectives.
Because of the diverse skill set of the team, we can also assist with training samplers, developing RFPs, working with certified laboratories, processing data, and educating your community. Our platform provides a mechanism of sharing the data across the user basis and provides a secure and safe mechanism to allow readily access of the data and information for the health care, water professional, or school administrate, but at the same time provides a means to educate and inform the community while securing the data.
If you need assistance with developing an RFP, currently have an RFP and require assistance, or want to learn more about the KnowYourH20 Team and our programs please contact us.
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