Upcoming Regulatory Stakeholder Process: Direct Potable Reuse (2021 - 2023)

Overview

Direct potable reuse (DPR), whereby a community directly treats wastewater to be used for drinking water, is listed in the Colorado Water Plan as a strategy to address the state’s water gap. DPR is not currently practiced in the state of Colorado but is not prohibited. Currently, no federal or state regulations exist to ensure that DPR will reliably produce safe potable water.  At the invitation of stakeholders, the department has been working with the Colorado Water Conservation Board, engineering firms, researchers, and stakeholders to explore DPR in Colorado since 2014. The group developed guidelines that lay a strong foundation ready to build upon to develop a DPR rule. Some stakeholders, including Denver Water, piloted DPR projects and garnered positive media coverage. Done correctly, DPR is a safe and viable option for drinking water.

Stakeholders asked the state to initiate a stakeholder process to begin developing a DPR-specific rule this year and offered funding to support facilitation. 

This work has been enthusiastically championed and funded by this stakeholder group that includes several public utilities including the City of Castle Rock, City of Aurora, Denver Water, South Metro Wastewater, plus the Colorado Water Congress. Stakeholders estimate it may take until the 2030s before multiple utilities build DPR treatment systems, but utilities need regulations in place far sooner than that to support adequate planning, conceptual treatment designs, and financing. Additionally, a robust DPR rule will help build public trust in the process. The current regulations do not provide for adequate treatment needed to protect public health in a DPR situation. One concern the department has is that the lack of a DPR regulation creates a vulnerability.  If a community in a drought situation insists on implementing DPR, but the department would not have an adequate framework to support and safely oversee the situation. Such a situation could then erode public confidence in DPR for the foreseeable future. 

A crisis is not the right time to try and figure out the best way to approach DPR. 

Timeline

Without state regulation, the public may be less inclined to drink DPR water, and the challenge of addressing the state water gap could be further challenged. Stakeholders applied for and won a grant to hire a facilitator to support a stakeholder process for regulatory development starting this winter through 2022. The department therefore intends to work with the stakeholder community and initiate the effort to develop DPR regulations. In other words, we would draft a proposed rule through this stakeholder effort and coordinate with the Water Quality Control Commission regarding scheduling a rulemaking.  The Department estimates that the rule development process may take about 18 to 24 months.  The result will be a rule that requires systems to follow design, treatment, and monitoring requirements and ensure appropriate public health protection.  A DPR rule would fit into the current regulatory structure and is not expected to be fundamentally different from other rulemakings we’ve done in the past. 

Ultimately, a DPR rule will give communities the needed platform to be resilient against a changing climate and growing population while also ensuring public health and trust. 

For more information, please contact Tyson Ingels at 303-692-3002 or tyson.ingels@state.co.us. 

Coaches Classroom: How to get training unit approval for online courses?

Online Course Approvals for Training Units 

During 2020, due to COVID restrictions, opportunities for in-person classroom training have all but disappeared. Therefore, many operators, by necessity, have looked to online courses for the training units (TUs) they need to renew their certificates. Colorado is indeed fortunate to have over 500 hundred online courses approved for training unit credit. Nevertheless, the Colorado Certified Water Professionals (CCWP) program has received a number of questions about training events that have not been pre-approved and are not included in the course catalog.

Regulation 100.16 establishes the continuing education requirement for certificate renewal and links training unit awards with the length of the training. Instructors issue training units based on actual contact hours, not necessarily the maximum TU values possible. For example, course instructors only award 50% of the TUs available for a course to a participant who only attends half of the training. Therefore, to accurately and appropriately award TUs, course providers must be able to verify participation and attendance.

As part of the process to approve courses for training units, the CCWP Portal asks course providers how they will verify participation. Traditionally, in-person courses have used registrations, sign-in sheets and stamped attendance sheets to document attendance. Classroom instructors managed participation through eye contact and dialog with attendees. Now, for live online training events, course providers may use electronic registrations and roll calls to confirm attendance; they may pause during a course to poll students or question them directly to check understanding and engagement. Courses provided without a live instructor confirm attendance through a registration process, and ensure participation with quizzes or other positive interaction elements that require student responses in order to proceed through the training. 

The Colorado Certified Water Professionals office staff review requests for training unit approval in accordance with regulation 100 and Water and Wastewater Facility Operators Certification Board policies. The office has developed written guidance for course providers, including discussion of the verification of participation element. All of the courses included in the course catalog have a mechanism for confirming attendance and engagement, and have been approved for training units.

Outside the course catalog, there are numerous online training opportunities. Operators have the option to request approval of their non-catalog courses for a $25.00 fee. However, when non-catalog courses lack any mechanisms to verify participation, such requests are denied. In general, online courses that self-complete without positive interaction elements, such as videos or pre-recorded webinars (without a live instructor), will most likely be denied. This does not mean the course content is not valuable. It just means there is no way to verify that the participant actually sat down and engaged with the material for the entirety of the course. 

As noted already, training unit credit is awarded based on instruction contact time. One hour of training yields 0.1 training unit. If an online course allows participants to skip through portions of the course, or advance from slide to slide without requiring a reasonable amount of time to view and listen to all of the presentation, it will not be approved for training units. 

The Water and Wastewater Facility Operators Certification Board considers continuing education vitally important. To accomplish the intended purpose of the training requirement in Regulation 100, courses approved for training unit credit must be engaging and demonstrate effectiveness in transmitting the course objectives to the participants.

➽ Nancy Horan, Facility and Operator Outreach and Certification Board Liaison

Cybersecurity: Threats on the Rise, Take Action Today!

Take Action Today to Protect Your System Against Cyber Attacks! 

A cyber attack is not something any utility should experience especially when these are already tough times with COVID-19. Take measures to help prevent your system from being attacked.  

If your utility experiences a cybersecurity incident, please coordinate with your local law enforcement, the department, and report the incident to the DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and WaterISAC. 

For department coordination, please note the following:

• If you experience a Cybersecurity threat or attack fill out a Tampering Threat and Incident Report and submit to cdphe.wqacutes@state.co.us.
• If the cyberattack will result in an acute drinking water incident (e.g. turbidity exceedance, positive E. coli sample, line break, actual/potential backflow contamination, etc.) contact the CDPHE 24-hr Acute line: 1-877-518-5608.
• If there is no potential for an acute drinking water incident, contact your system’s  compliance officer.

Update - Storage Tank Rule

The five-year anniversary of the Storage Tank Rule (Regulation11, Section 11.28) is just a few months away - April 1, 2021. It will get here fast!  

Updates to Regulation 11

The department proposed modifications to improve the Storage Tank Rule and two other sections of the regulations, Public Notification and Sanitary Survey rules.  The department completed a stakeholder effort and presented these modifications to the Water Quality Control Commission. The Commission approved all proposed modifications in August 2020. The new regulation was effective on October 1, 2020. The Storage Tank Rule (Regulation 11, Section 28) protects public health and public water systems from potential contamination associated with unprotected storage tanks within the public water system’s drinking water distribution system. 

The storage tank rule helps ensure public health protection by having suppliers routinely inspect finished water storage tanks so that sanitary defects are rapidly identified and corrected. This goal is achieved by requiring two key activities: 

• Periodic inspections of all unpressurized tanks downstream of the entry point, unless an alternative plan is approved; and 
• Comprehensive tank inspections no more than every five years.  

The intent of the rule modifications in the summer was to provide additional flexibility to water suppliers while continuing to protect public health. Feedback from suppliers over the three-plus years of implementation also contributed to the regulation improvements. The most important change is that periodic inspections are now only required twice per year, evenly spaced, instead of quarterly. However, the department still recommends that these be conducted quarterly if the tank is safely accessible year-round.

Comprehensive Inspections

Also, as the April 1, 2021 deadline approaches for comprehensive inspections, it is important to remember that there are key responsibilities that the supplier of water or operator have rather than the tank inspection company:

• Properly identifying sanitary defects - based on Safe Drinking Water Policy 10, suppliers should interpret all tank inspections and accurately identify sanitary defects. Violations will be issued during the Sanitary Survey if a supplier reviews a tank inspection report and fails to  identify a sanitary defect when it is clearly a defect.
• Appropriately setting a schedule to correct any defects identified and documenting their resolution. 

Often, sanitary defects identified at storage tanks that are found during a sanitary survey are issues that should have been identified during a periodic or comprehensive inspection and corrected relatively quickly. Common issues include things like cracked, missing, or incomplete hatch gaskets, holes or breaches in the tank that are easily identified by rust accumulation, over an inch of sediment in tanks and tank overflows without proper protection. The goal of the Storage Tank Rule is to have sanitary defects such as these identified and corrected quickly after a periodic or comprehensive inspection. Allowing sanitary defects to persist and instead rely on the three- or five-year sanitary survey frequency to identify them is not protective of public health and goes against the public health goal of the finished water Storage Tank Rule. Therefore, the department is citing all sanitary defects at finished water storage tanks that are identified during a sanitary survey as violations of section 11.28(4)(b)(iv) of the Storage Tank Rule. This violation of Regulation 11 is a treatment technique violation and will require that Tier 2 public notice is distributed.  

How can you comply with the Storage Tank Rule?  

The first place to start is the guidance and forms on the department’s website.  Read the guidance and familiarize yourself with the forms. These resources describe what the department is looking for with regard to sanitary defects and tank inspections. During your sanitary survey, engage with your inspector regarding your periodic and comprehensive inspection program. Discuss the results of earlier periodic inspections and relate how you addressed discovered sanitary defects. Inspectors are more than willing to assist suppliers with implementing their storage tank inspection plan and the process in place to ensure that sanitary defects are quickly addressed. If you have questions regarding implementation of the Storage Tank Rule, please email the Field Services Section at cdphe_wqcd_fss_questions@state.co.us. The department and the supplier share the same goal – “Always Safe Drinking Water”.  

➽Tyson Ingels, Lead Drinking Water Engineer