EPA Small Drinking Water Systems Webinar on Wildfires and Resulting Impacts to Water Bodies Used as Drinking Water
Registration is now open for EPA’s Small Drinking Water Systems Webinar on Wildfires and Resulting Impacts to Water Bodies Used as Drinking Water. This webinar will be held on Tuesday, September 29th from 2:00-3:00 ET, with an optional Q&A session from 3:00-3:30pm ET.
To register, please click the following link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/2152789201095229455. After registering for the webinar, you should receive an automatic reply with a link to test your computer’s compatibility with the webinar software. Please note that for this webinar, attendees can only listen with computer audio and will not be able to call into the webinar using a phone line. This change has been made to allow more people to attend the webinar.
A webinar will be given each month to discuss challenges and treatment solutions for small drinking water and wastewater systems.
Detritus material in forest watersheds is the major terrestrial source of dissolved organic matter (DOM) and disinfection byproduct (DBP) precursors in water bodies used as drinking water sources and is also a fuel that can ignite wildfires. In these watersheds, hot temperatures and dry conditions increase the likelihood of high-severity wildfires. To help reduce this risk, low-severity prescribed burning is used as a forest management practice to reduce fuel loads from forest floor detritus material. In either high- or low-severity fires, DOM exported to source waters from managed watersheds is likely to have different characteristics and treatability compared to DOM exported from unburned watersheds. These potential source water quality changes may require that drinking water utilities adapt their treatment processes to account for these changes. Modeling and decision support tools can help explore treatability and adaptation strategies for these impacted water systems.