Participants at a national workshop on water, hosted by the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority, (DCWASA) and the George Washington School of Public Health and Health Services, will hold a press briefing on the unintended consequences of certain water regulations on Wednesday, October 13, 2004.

The briefing will be held at 12:30 p.m. in the Doyle Room of the Cafritz Conference Center in the GWU Marvin Center.

Participants, including water utilities from around the country, environmentalists, academic, government and public health officials, are expected to release an action statement.

The workshop addressed such issues as identifying health risks appropriately and risk communication, simultaneous compliance and the science and policy questions that have arisen in recent months around the Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) and its enforcement.

Part of the workshop included a case study of DCWASA’s experience with lead leaching.

At the time, the DCWASA situation was considered an aberration, but other major city utilities - in New York, Boston, Portland, Ore., Seattle, Philadelphia and Detroit - maybe faced with similar situations in the near future as water producers meet regulations that often conflict with and confound one another.

“DCWASA has been the laboratory for simultaneous compliance,” said Jerry N. Johnson, General Manager of DCWASA. “Every action that is taken dealing with the chemistry of the water creates another reaction that sometimes has unintentional negative consequences that need to be addressed.”