White River Junction Meeting Comments from 4/5/2000 at 7:00 pm meeting:

How the State Will Use the Authority And Resources Of the Safe Drinking Water Act

• Strengthen link between owners/operators and the Water Supply Division.(WSD)
• Review and strengthen links for consistent regulations with Agency Of Natural Resources with other State Agencies.
  
• Fund a State wide advertising program with creative mailouts to the public to promote water system activities. Funding a WSD newsletter isn't needed. There is enough good literature out there on distribution. Call in show promotions. Program should be on going due to high turnover of boards/operators.
  
• Form a clearinghouse where water system owners/operators can go for list of resources. Ray Solomon is an example of an excellent resource.
  
• Simplify rules/regulations requirements for small water systems. Water systems are overwhelmed with administration task. Keep it simple.
  
• Educate customers that this is a full time job and how much work is being performed. It isn't a volunteer position for many of those systems. Need more press releases/educations support.
• Need to focus on helping schools with grants, training and technical assistance. Promote sampling by district.
• State should review the impact in reference to ACT 60 impact on school systems.
• Develop a mentoring program on a geographical regional basis. Where qualified professional can assist another system in developing templates for long range planning , O & M manuals etc...(Pennsylvania is doing mentoring work.) Create more technical workshops.
• Funding of computer technology to enhance communication (i.e. -email) with public on water system management.
  
• Fund water system with grant money for the cost of sampling or have the state do the sampling.
  
• Government regulators must realize that small water systems have static income and have difficulty keeping up with increasing cost due to new regulations.

Prioritizing System

• Encourage the idea of keeping the systems that are in compliance stay in compliance.

Encourage/Impair

• Impair the viability of systems trying to decommissioned. This may create a higher public health risk not being a public water supply system anymore.
• Encourage discussion for a shared operator to operate/ sample several water systems.
• Encourage discussion for system consolidation where possible.