Celebrating 40 Years of ASDWA – Learning from the Past to Help Us Succeed in the Future - Interview with Alan Roberson, Executive Director

Tell us about ASDWA. Who are your members, what is your history and impact on the water sector?
ASDWA is the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators. Our members are the state, territorial, and tribal drinking water agencies, which includes all 50 states, 5 territories, the Navajo Nation, and the District of Columbia. We pride ourselves on bringing together the states to share their experiences and advice, as well as being a trusted voice on behalf of the states to EPA. Our members have insight on what is feasible within their states and the drinking water systems they regulate, providing a key perspective to help EPA create the necessary regulations that keep drinking water safe. As we approach the 40th anniversary of ASDWA and the 50th anniversary of the Safe Drinking Water Act, we are doubling down on our mission to protect drinking water and public health through continued support of the states and collaboration with EPA.

One of ASDWA’s priorities is to rebuild trust in our nation’s drinking water, through high-quality data that is accessible to communities. What work are you doing to ensure communities can find, access and understand data about their drinking water?
As with many aspects of protecting drinking water, ensuring the consistent collection and dissemination of reliable data is a complicated matter. ASDWA understands the issues states have with accessing data and managing the extensive and complicated data they can collect, so we have made it a focus of our work. To help data managers across the state drinking water programs learn from each other and have a smooth transition to a new federal data platform, we host a Data Management Users Conference annually. This conference brings states and EPA together to discuss data collection and management across the different levels of government. This conference, and the work of the data community at state drinking water programs, pushes the work of ASDWA forward. We want to be a trusted resource for our states, to ease communication around the complex issues of data management and to connect them to the resources that will ensure physical and cyber security of our drinking water systems.

What’s the biggest challenge your members face and how are you helping them to overcome these challenges?
Every state is different, so their challenges, and ours, vary. Out West (and recently in the Northeast), prolonged drought threatens drinking water sources. In the South, hurricanes and extreme weather events leave behind severe infrastructure damage. Some states face cybersecurity threats from malicious sources, exposing key vulnerabilities in the public water systems. But across all the states, territories, and tribes, workforce changes and turnover strains nearly every drinking water program. These programs see increased scrutiny and regulatory oversight from EPA, with a new rule for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), the Lead and Copper Rule Improvements (LCRI), and potential revisions to the Microbial/Disinfection By-Products (MDBP) Rule, and other complex regulations. These rules will require the state workforce to tackle new compliance checks and additional monitoring at the water systems. But with an aging workforce and more state employees retiring than entering the sector, it poses a threat to the ability for state drinking water programs to run effectively. ASDWA works to convey this challenge to EPA and Congress, in the hopes that the States receive more funding in their Drinking Water State Revolving Funds and increased grant opportunities for water system support. The state drinking water programs need as much support as any other state program or agency, so ASDWA will continue to advocate on their behalf to ensure that all Americans can access safe and healthy drinking water.

You are leading a research project with EPA’s office of Research and Development (ORD) focused on innovative treatment. Tell us about the project’s goals and any results you may be able to share.
The overall goal of this project is to optimize the review and approval process for different treatment technologies. The focus recently has been on PFAS and some of those treatment technologies, but in general, the hope is to collect and share the states’ knowledge and experience on the different treatment technologies with our members and with EPA. These treatment technologies are in varying stages of popularity in the drinking water systems; some have been readily accepted and are being implemented at large scales, while others are still within the pilot testing phase. To protect public health, state agencies must ensure that any treatment technology used in their systems can remove the contaminant to the maximum containment levels set by EPA. By collecting this data, we hope to work with EPA ORD to develop guidelines and standards that find the compromise between meeting federal standards but with ease of implementation at public water systems across the country.

As we go into 2025, what is the ASDWA team focusing on?
As we head into 2025, we are focusing on how best to support our members through the upcoming changes. We are preparing to handle a new EPA administration and the changes to their priorities, as well as the changes to our own organization. ASDWA is currently searching for a new Executive Director, as we are also seeing turnover and workforce changes due to retirement. Throughout all this change, our focus remains steadfast on being a strong liaison between the States and EPA, with an ever-lasting dedication to the protection of drinking water and public health.