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Regulatory Alert - RA 02-7 - 2002 WET WEATHER SURVEY

Member Pipeline - Regulatory - Alert (RA 02-7)

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To: Members & Affiliates, and Wet Weather Issues Committee
From: National Office
Date: March 27, 2002
Subject: 2002 WET WEATHER SURVEY
Reference: RA 02-7

Action Please By:
April 22, 2002

Survey Logo

AMSA's 2002 Wet Weather Survey to Fill Critical Data Gaps in SSO Rule
AMSA is pleased to launch its 2002 Wet Weather Survey, the first national survey of its kind, with the distribution of the attached survey form. We wish to thank you in advance for your attention to this very important survey, which is expected to assist AMSA greatly in representing the interests of the wastewater treatment community nationwide!

We ask that you complete the 2002 Wet Weather Survey and submit your completed forms to AMSA by no later than Monday, April 22. The survey form is attached and available on-line by visiting the AMSA web site at http://amsa-cleanwater.org and clicking on the 2002 Wet Weather Survey icon (see above). This Regulatory Alert provides some of the background to this project, and summarizes important information for your use in completing the survey.

Survey Will Help Advance AMSA's Goal of Shaping Wet Weather Regulations
The objective of the 2002 Wet Weather Survey is to develop a more thorough understanding of how members design their collection systems and treatment plants to handle wet weather flows. This information will be critical to AMSA's ongoing regulatory negotiations with EPA on a reasonable sanitary sewer overflow (SSO) rule and blending policy. The survey will also provide the foundation for proposing site-specific methodologies for publicly owned treatment works (POTWs) and collection system owners and operators to follow when setting the design capacity for the collection system.

Data collected through this survey will be incorporated into a final report, which will be available in early July, and will be used to propose a methodology for POTWs to use in the future when sizing new sewers to address SSOs. The final report will be presented and distributed at AMSA's Summer Conference in Portland, OR from July 16-19.

Broad Member Participation Needed to Reflect National Wet Weather Issues
Each member's participation in the 2002 Wet Weather Survey is critically important. We urge you, or your designated staff, to complete the Wet Weather Survey to ensure that the data collected is a true representation of the nation's POTWs. Capacity and blending issues have not been previously surveyed on a national basis. Therefore, we need to receive completed surveys from as many members as possible in order to properly depict our industry's practices. We realize this is an in-depth and time-consuming survey and will require careful analysis. We greatly appreciate your participation in this endeavor.

Great care went into developing this survey. Before being distributed today, a dedicated AMSA member peer group within the Wet Weather Issues Committee was convened to review each question. The survey was pilot tested by several AMSA members. Although the survey is extensive, we did make every attempt to ask for information which we believed to be readily available or which can be reasonably estimated.

Protection of Sensitive Information
We recognize that some of the requested information is sensitive. To encourage your participation, the survey will be blind. Information you provide us will be displayed only in an aggregate manner. No specific facility identification will be included in the final report or in any information published.

Complete the Survey On-Line
To help encourage a strong participation among AMSA's POTW members and to make the survey form easier to complete and submit, the 2002 Wet Weather Survey will be available on-line through the AMSA web site. You will have the option of completing this form either (1) on-line by accessing the home page of AMSA's web site, or (2) in hard copy format (see attached survey form). We encourage those of you with internet access to fill out the survey on-line to help us better process your survey information.

For on-line surveys, go to http://amsa-cleanwater.org and access the 2002 Wet Weather Survey icon (see top of page 1) to enter the dedicated survey page. You will be able to submit your completed form directly to AMSA, where we will store your data in a survey database for analysis. For questions concerning the on-line format, please contact Gunnar Gehrmann at 202/833-9384 or ggehrmann@amsa-cleanwater.org.

Instructions for Submitting Completed Surveys
Detailed instructions and information is available to guide you through the survey. We summarize some of the key instructions below:

Survey Deadline: April 22, 2002

Submissions: You can submit your completed survey to AMSA c/o Gunnar Gehrmann by fax (202/833-4657) or email (ggehrmann@amsa-cleanwater.org)

Survey Questions: Regarding meaning of survey questions: Call Reggie Rowe at 205/657-8459 or 334/271-1445 (ext. 730), or email at rrowe@ch2m.com Regarding on-line survey form: Gunnar Gehrmann at 202/833-9384 or ggehrmann@amsa-cleanwater.org.

Project Questions: Greg Schaner at 202/296-9836 or gschaner@amsa-cleanwater.org

Thank you again for your participation in this important effort.

 

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