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Water Headlines for May 12, 2008Benjamin H. Grumbles Water Headlines is a weekly on-line publication that announces publications, policies, and activities of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Water. In This Week’s Water Headlines:
EPA Congratulates the 2008 River of Words HonoreesToday, Benjamin H. Grumbles, Assistant Administrator for Water, congratulated the 2008 River of Words Honorees at the 13th Annual Award Ceremony for the River of Words Environmental Poetry and Art Contest at the Library of Congress. Each year, in affiliation with The Library of Congress Center for the Book, River of Words hosts a free international poetry and art contest for youth on the theme of watersheds. The contest is designed to help youth explore the natural and cultural history of the place they live, and to express through poetry and art what they discover. The contest is open to any child ages 5-19 in the world. Eight Grand Prize winners—four in poetry and four in art, in four different age categories—are chosen from the U.S. entries. Poetry submissions are judged by River of Words co-founders Robert Hass, who served as U.S. Poet Laureate from 1995-1997, and writer Pamela Michael. Art entries are judged by children's book writer and illustrator, Thacher Hurd. The Grand Prize for Category I, which is grades K-2, went to Jack Baker, age 7, from Denver, Colorado. Here is his poem titled Sewer: Rats roaming down here. We encourage you to visit http://riverofwords.org/ EPA Invests $8 Million to Secure San Francisco’s Drinking Water SupplyThe U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced an $8 million grant awarded to San Francisco to help the city develop and evaluate a drinking water contamination warning system for its drinking water supply. The pilot project, called the Water Security Initiative, is expected to serve as a model for the nation’s drinking water utilities. The grant funds will allow the San Francisco Public Utility Commission (SFPUC) to pilot monitoring, sampling, detection and early warning systems. The $8 million EPA grant will be matched by a $3 million investment by the SFPUC. New York City also recently received a similar grant, announced last month. The SFPUC currently tests drinking water more than 90,000 times per year throughout the regional water system using state-of-the-art sampling, detection and analysis tools. The EPA’s grant will allow the SFPUC to also deploy and pilot new high technology equipment that monitors and detects for new potential contaminants at key locations in the water system. While specific details about the system cannot be divulged for security reasons, the contamination warning system to be installed and evaluated by San Francisco involves online water quality monitoring, public health surveillance, sampling and analysis, enhanced security monitoring, and consumer complaint surveillance. The warning system is also designed to be sustainable for long-term operation and to improve water quality management. The SFPUC’s Hetch Hetchy regional water system delivers reliable, high quality drinking water to more than 2.4 million Bay Area residents in San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Alameda Counties from protected Sierra and Bay Area reservoirs and watersheds. For more information about the EPA’s Water Security Initiative, visit: http://cfpub.epa.gov/safewater/watersecurity/index.cfm. For more information about the SFPUC water system and San Francisco’s water quality, visit http://www.sfwater.org. FY 2009 National Water Program Guidance is ReleasedThe National Water Program has released the final Fiscal Year 2009 National Water Program Guidance. This is the second annual water program guidance to implement the EPA 2006-2011 Strategic Plan. This guidance describes water program priorities and strategies, including the suite of water performance measures and their targets, for the coming fiscal year. The National Water Program thanks stakeholders who have provided comments on the draft guidance in March for their contribution to the revision of the draft document. The final guidance is available at http://www.epa.gov/water/waterplan/fy09.html. Subscribe to Water HeadlinesPlease forward this message to your friends and colleagues who share an interest in water-related issues and would like to hear from EPA’s Office of Water. To subscribe to the Water Headlines listserve: Send an email message, leave the subject line blank, and address it to: In the body of the message write: Subscribe Water Headlines first name last name (Please leave one blank space between each word, do not include any other message, and use your actual name- i.e. Subscribe Water Headlines Robert Jones)
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