· 401 KAR 8:020 – Public and semipublic water supplies; general provisions
· 401 KAR 8:070 -  Public notification
· 401 KAR 8:150 -  Disinfection, filtration, and recycling
· 401 KAR 8:200 – Microbiological monitoring
· 401 KAR 8:250 -  Inorganic chemical sampling, analytical techniques, and maximum contaminant levels
· 401 KAR 8:300 -  Lead and copper
· 401 KAR 8:510 – Disinfectant residuals, disinfection by-products, and disinfection by-product precursors
· 401 KAR 8:550 – Radionuclides

The public hearing is scheduled for April 26, 2010. Individuals may submit written comments that identify anticipated effects through April 30, 2010.

DOW posts all regulations and amendments that are filed with the LRC on its Web site at http://www.water.ky.gov/regulations.  Filed regulations are also posted on the LRC’s Web site at http://www.lrc.ky.gov/kar/TITLE401.HTM.

Please contact  by email or by phone at 502-564-3410, extension 4808, if you have any questions concerning this email.

Abby Powell
Regulations Coordinator
Kentucky Division of Water

Phone: (502) 564-3410 ext 4808
Email: abigail.powell@ky.gov

Quality On Tap! is just one way to promote your utility. It’s a practical “hands-on” guide to better public relations for water utilities. It contains tools that water and wastewater utilities need to do the most important job of all – spreading the truth to the public of the quality of work they do and the quality of services they provide. As utilities nationwide use the “Quality On Tap” logo and materials to promote their quality of service, they are also promoting the quality service of each utility that participates in this campaign. Every time a consumer sees the QOT logo or materials, they are being assured that their utility is providing Quality On Tap to their customers. Whether it’s seen in Kentucky, or Maine, Montana or Texas, the public will come to know that the services provided by water and wastewater utilities in America leads to “Quality On Tap“!

Visit NRWA’s website to download Quality on Tap! information and logos, as well as other downloads to help your utility celebrate “Earth Day.”

National Rural Water Quality on Tap Event Planner

Earth Day Suggestions from Kentucky State Employees

Help Protect the Environment, Earth Day and Every Day

The threat of global climate change has galvanized governments, organizations, and citizens around the world to re-imagine our lives in ways that contribute to long-term sustainability. Doing so is challenging us to reprioritize issues, rethink business plans, and reconsider the relationships between people and resources.

Nowhere is this focus on sustainability clearer than in water utilities. A decade ago, many water utility executives saw replacing an aging distribution infrastructure as their biggest challenge. Today, while that challenge remains, it has become part of a far larger issue: How can water utilities support communities and their economies as populations grow, given that fresh water supply remains level at best and in many regions is shrinking dramatically?

As drought and population growth sharpen the focus on water, utilities, environmental groups, and governments increasingly look to smart metering to help customers better understand and curb their water use; to identify leaks; and to underpin new rate and regulatory programs that respond to community water needs.

Justifying the implementation of the technology to support smart metering, however, will require cooperation and support from local and regional governments, communities, and above all, customers.

Why Should Water Utilities Move to Smart Metering?

Information to the Customer

Smart metering increases the information available to the customer and helps enable in-home displays. Display devices that show real-time water use help customers detect leaks. While diligent customers may, a few times a year, turn off all water and check an outside meter to ensure there is no flow, most meters are located in isolated areas that make it hard to detect new, small leaks. A conveniently located indoor monitor can help a customer notice a leak because, for instance, the reading is higher in the morning than it was at night even though in theory no one used water that day.

Prominently located displays also serve as a constant reminder about the need for water conservation. Parents can even build games for children around the readings to teach conservation habits. They also enable jurisdictions to secure customer compliance with water-use advisories or restrictions, such as weekly maximum use limits.

Preliminary investigation indicates that customers with displays are more likely to use less water. However, installing monitors at each customer site may come with a price tag water utilities find difficult to afford. As a result, many elect less expensive ways to provide consumption details, such as Web sites with individualized portals or even printouts enclosed with bills. Although surveys indicate that customers prefer the on-site display, Web portals are another effective method to link concerned customers to information on how to lower consumption and/or bills.

Information to the Utility

Smart metering also delivers valuable data to utilities. For example, utilities can use time-of-use or interval data to detect customer-premises leaks from their end. Leak detection for households is relatively simple, and utilities can use more sophisticated algorithms to identify possible leaks at commercial and industrial properties with round-the-clock water use.

Preliminary experience indicates that substantial numbers of customers will sign up for voluntary leak notification if offered and will provide contact information for automatic alerts. In communities with serious or growing water issues, mandatory notification may become the norm. In many cases, it appears, customers may already know about, for instance, a dripping faucet; but notification from the utility pointing out the cost and long-term community implications can encourage repair. Utility notifications are even more welcome and effective when customers are unaware of leaks in walls and foundations that, left unrepaired, have the potential to damage structures significantly. As water issues escalate, some jurisdictions are even considering fines or penalties for customers who fail to fix leaks.

Further, a utility that compares daily consumption for a group of customers (such as residences on a block) with readings from a water main serving that block may be able to identify small leaks (or possibly theft) before they become too large to overlook. This could prove especially useful for drought-plagued areas where the utilities may be under heavy pressure to identify possible violations of local restrictions on, for instance, outdoor watering or non-essential water use during daylight hours. Smart metering data can help them fulfill such public mandates. It can also be a major financial factor. Regulators concerned about reducing water waste may establish performance-based incentives for utilities to reduce water loss. The faster utilities can detect, size, and prioritize repairs for leaks, the better their chances to earn these incentives.

Other ways utilities can benefit from smart metering include:

• Obtaining off-cycle, “final” meter reads for customers that are moving. It is common to couple these real-time final meter reads with online or credit-card bill payment that enables utilities to collect immediately on bills that might otherwise take weeks or months to reach a relocated customer.
• Remotely disconnecting or restricting the flow of meters in regions where this is permitted.1 Remote-disconnect meters reduce the costs to send field crews to premises of customers who have either requested a disconnect or who are being disconnected (or ratcheted back) for bill nonpayment.2
• Checking meter status (“pinging the meter”) before sending a repair crew out. These checks can sometimes prevent needless field crew dispatch to customer sites.
• Ensuring that almost all bills are based on actual meter reads rather than on estimates. This reduces calls to the contact center and improves customer satisfaction.
• Helping control electricity costs for pumping water by enabling utilities to track the lowest rates and perform these activities during off-peak hours.
• Offering prepayment options to customers without the expense of special prepayment meters.3
• Providing feedback to utility staff on conservation program effectiveness, enabling them to make improvements.

So What’s the Issue?

Discussion of smart metering abounds, but many utilities hesitate when they see the large financial commitments involved and the uncertainties of customer response. Will they be able to recover the costs? Will they find themselves on the bleeding rather than leading edge of technology? Focusing just on the benefits of smart metering would be foolish. Utilities do need to look carefully at the costs and challenges they will face.

Hidden Costs of Smart Metering

Many smart metering costs are obvious. However, in addition to the costs for smart meters — two-way communications infrastructure to facilitate data sharing, a meter data management application to do the initial processing of the meter data and store it in a central repository, and the integration necessary to utilize the data — there are other less apparent costs to:

• Add technology and infrastructure to support smart meters and the major increase in data volumes.
• Modify or replace the customer information system (CIS).
• Expand or obtain software to view and analyze the usage data by various utility business and operating functions.
• Obtain or expand middleware and messaging software to reliably handle communications between applications and alerts from field devices.
• Upgrade or add hardware to store and process interval usage data.
• Educate customers about the meter replacement project, including its anticipated costs and benefits.
• Research and design new rate tariffs.
• Retrain staff to install and maintain the new meters and infrastructure.

Careful evaluation of these costs can help utilities with planning. In addition, selection of integrated applications and scalable infrastructure technology can minimize total costs.

Weighing the Costs and Benefits of Smart Metering for Water Utilities

Although there are many significant benefits possible with smart metering, it is clear that there are also challenges. Utilities must carefully consider the approach and technology requirements needed. Costs are high, and there is significant risk as well. Here are a few things to keep in mind when making the business case.

Including All Potential Benefits

Smart metering may be hard to justify if it rests solely on decreased water use. It is easier to cost-justify when it includes, for instance, the value of:

• Ensuring that all meters are recording water flow following repair of a break in a main.
• Remote programming that enables customers to use new products or services to advance community and environmental goals.
• Fewer meter readers, which lowers overhead costs.
• Remote rather than expensive and occasionally risky on-site disconnects or flow restrictions. Consider all avoided costs, including technician time and transportation costs.
• Less wasted time in attempts to pinpoint the size and source of leaks and breaks.
• Lower risk to public safety from flooded intersections or lack of service to hydrants.
• Better meter reading accuracy, resulting in fewer calls to the contact center.
• Faster theft or other loss detection.
• Lower electricity costs (for those utilities using electric pumps).
• Reduced use of chemicals currently used to treat water that is then wasted through leakage from water mains or via customer-premises leaks from pipes or fixtures.
• Longer life spans for water treatment equipment.

Valuing Conservation

For most water utilities, the leading smart metering benefit is the role it can play in conservation. As governments and citizens become increasingly conscious of the potential for water shortages, emphasis on conservation increases and conservation programs are practically an imperative. They help stabilize volume, ease wear and tear on a utility’s physical assets, and reduce use of water purification chemicals, thus cutting costs while slowing environmental damage.

That does not mean, of course, that water utilities can gain approval for smart metering merely by invoking conservation. It does mean, however, that regulators are more likely to value conservation as a non-monetized benefit of smart metering.

Conclusion

A new generation of water utility leaders is emerging in response to communities’ increasing concerns. They articulate a new vision: sustainable water distribution systems that minimize cost, maximize safety, encourage economic development, and protect the environment while delivering reliable service.

There is every reason to believe that smart metering will replace most of today’s metering approaches within the foreseeable future. At today’s prices, many utilities are constructing conservative business cases that foresee a relatively short payback period for smart metering investments. Rapidly falling prices and the multiple advantages to both customers and utilities should make the systems even more compelling.

A strong technology infrastructure can help water utilities realize their new vision. But creating such an infrastructure is no easy task. To respond to these challenges cost-effectively, water utilities should consider implementing an integrated infrastructure of business software applications. With a solid applications infrastructure — especially one optimized for water utility business processes — they maximize their opportunities to meet their most important goals: matching water supply and demand at affordable prices that preserve communities and foster economic growth.

About the Author

Guerry Waters is the vice president of industry strategy for Oracle Utilities. He joined Oracle Utilities in 2006 when Oracle acquired SPL WorldGroup, a company he joined in 2000. Previous positions include Vice President of Energy Information Strategy at META Group (now Gartner) and CTO and Director of Technology Strategy and Engineering at Southern Company. He focuses on IT strategies that help utilities meet their goals amidst changing customer demands, regulations, and market structures.

(Western Kentucky Region)

Date/Time

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

8:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. (CDT)

Location

Muhlenberg County Career Advancement Center

50 Career Way (off Hwy. 189)

Central City (Powderly), Kentucky

Topic/Speakers

“Hire Right – Fire Right”

Tracey Walls

Human Resource Professional, TVA

&

Leigh Douglas

Kentucky Office of Employment and Training

To Pre-register

Sandy Gary, Muhlenberg Co. Water District #3

270.525.6333

sandygary@bellsouth.net

or

Kentucky Rural Water Association

270.843.2291

j.cole@krwa.org

Cost

No Fee

By Christopher Palmeri and Nanette Byrnes

The once red-hot bottled water industry has lost its sparkle. The $12-billion-a-year business has gotten whacked in the past year by the weak economy, an environmental backlash against plastic bottles, and competition from trendy canteens, often filled with tap water. That has left water marketers taking drastic steps to win back consumers, including a 3D Super Bowl ad and investments in the Fijian rain forest.

U.S. consumers gulped 8.9 billion gallons of bottled water in 2008, a 2.3% increase from the previous year, according to the research firm Beverage Marketing. That’s a sharp decline, though, from the 8% to 12% annual growth the business enjoyed earlier in the decade, when such celebrities as Paris Hilton posed with Evian bottles and consumers drove around with cases of bottled water in the backs of their cars and SUVs.

Some of the biggest players in the industry are now reporting disappointing results. Industry leader Nestlé, owner of the Perrier, Poland Spring, and Arrowhead brands, says its water sales were flat in the U.S. through the first nine months of 2008 and down 3% globally. At Coca-Cola (KO), volumes of “still” beverages remained flat in the third quarter, due largely to declines in its Dasani brand. PepsiCo (PEP) saw its noncarbonated beverage volume fall 5% in the same period. Sales of its No. 2-selling Aquafina brand fell by double digits. The faltering economy is of course the biggest problem, as companies and cash-strapped consumers cut back on everything from trips to the convenience store to deliveries of five-gallon jugs. That has prompted a price war, with 24-bottle cases selling for as little as three-for-$10 in supermarkets.

Too Much Plastic

The environmental issue is close behind. Green activists have been agitating for years that all those billions of plastic bottles were an eco-disaster. Recently, their complaints have gotten heard. Cities such as Seattle and San Francisco have told their municipal offices to stop buying water in small plastic bottles. And high-end restaurants in New York and Los Angeles that used to fatten up customers’ checks by pushing “sparkling or tap” have stopped for fear of being seen as environmentally incorrect.

Don’t blame us, says Joseph Doss, president of the International Bottled Water Assn., a trade group. He’s quick with stats that say plastic water bottles represent just 0.3% of the waste in landfills, and points to recycling programs such as one in Hartford, Conn., where residents get store coupons for returning used bottles. He notes that plenty of other refreshments get served in plastic. “It’s just unfortunate people are turning it into a tap-water-vs.-bottled-water issue,” Doss says. “Consumers are making other beverage choices, including teas, soft drinks, and juices.”

That’s a position Nestlé is also taking, putting messages on its bottles reminding customers that a typical 12-oz. soda contains 10 tablespoons of sugar and that substituting a bottle of water every day would eliminate 3,560 tablespoons of sugar a year. Nestlé has also been a leader in reducing the amount of plastic used in its bottles from 15 grams two years ago to 12.5 grams now. Later this year it will release a new version of its “eco-shape” bottle that will contain only 10 grams, even though the lighter bottles strike some consumers as easy to spill. “We had to teach people, flimsy is good,” says Kim Jeffery, chief executive of Nestlé Waters North America.

Here Come Refillable Bottles

Other companies are also brushing up their eco-credentials. Groupe Danone, maker of Evian, is transporting its bottles by train in Europe to lessen the use of exhaust-spewing trucks. Fiji Water—which had to lay off 40% of its staff in December due to a weakened sales outlook—launched an educational Web site called Fijigreen.com and is contributing funds to reduce logging on the South Sea islands where its water is sourced. This month, Coke opened a bottle-to-bottle recycling plant in Spartanburg, S.C., that will use old bottles to produce enough plastic for nearly 2 billion new 20-oz. bottles every year.

Coke and Pepsi, meanwhile, have substantially cut back advertising for their Dasani and Aquafina brands, according to market researcher TNS Media Intelligence. Instead, the beverage behemoths are cranking up spending on flavored waters, for which they can charge higher prices. Coke paid a staggering $4.1 billion for Glaceau, maker of the Vitaminwater brand, in 2007. Since then it is heavily promoting the brand as a sports drink, with spots featuring athletes airing on the ESPN (DIS) cable networks. Pepsi, meanwhile, is featuring its SoBe Lifewater in a 60-second, 3D ad during the Super Bowl on Feb. 1.

When it comes to what’s cool, though, the bottled water business must now compete with a hot new product: refillable bottles made by such companies as Sigg, CamelBak, and Kleen Kanteen. And for now, at least, the tap-water crowd has the high ground in the battle over who is greenest. “The bottled water business hasn’t figured out a way to address the fundamental fact that municipal pipes are the most environmentally friendly way to distribute water,” says Paul Shustak. His company, KOR Ideas, sells a reusable plastic “hydration vessel” made, in case you’re curious, without any hormone-disrupting Bisphenol A.

Palmeri is a senior correspondent in BusinessWeek’s Los Angeles bureau. Byrnes is a senior writer for BusinessWeek in New York.

Water districts, water associations, and municipal utilities from around Kentucky were eligible to submit samples of their water, straight from the tap. This year’s conference, attended by nearly 400 participants, was themed Bridging the Gap. Representatives from the private sector, related industries, and from water and wastewater service providers, offered excellent perspectives and initiatives promoting sustainable practices to bridge today’s utility management gaps and challenges. Industry professionals were on hand to demonstrate the best and latest in supplies, materials, and services appropriate for utilities’ needs.

While the water from Hardin County Water District #2 was selected as the most appealing, second place was awarded to Manchester Water & Sewer in Clay County; with third place going to Warren County Water District.

Because of the quality of the drinking water from Hardin County Water District #2, Kentucky has a great chance of winning the national Best Tasting Water Contest in Washington, D.C., during the Rural Water Rally, an annual legislative event for the 48 state affiliates of the National Rural Water Association. The competition is part of the Quality on Tap! campaign to emphasize the high quality and, consequently, taste of America’s public drinking water.

Best Tasting Water Award

Accepting the award includes Shaun Youravich, Water Treatment Manager; James Jeffries, General Manager; and Scott Clark, Administrative Manager.

Tuesday morning sessions began with Clay Kelly, Mark Sneve, and Mark Askin, Strand Associates; James Jeffries, Hardin Co. Water District #2; and Damon Talley, Attorney at Law, leading discussions examining Managed Wastewater Service in Rural Kentucky.

Julie Roney and Julie Smoak, Kentucky Division of Water addressed some of the possible infrastructure modifications and changes in New Drinking Water Regulations-IDSE/Stage 2 DBP Rule and Capacity Development.

Tuesday afternoon sessions included Aaron Keatley, Kentucky Division of Compliance Assistance, on Regulations-New Water & Wastewater Operator Cerification Rules. Christal Wade, WKU-Center for Water Resource Studies reviewed recent changes in state regulations’ effect on utility staffing with The Water Training Institute (WTI): A Bridge into our Profession. Robert Mohan, The Neil Group, LLC, ended the day’s sessions discussing the six stages of change and Excelling Through the Chasms of Change.

The day concluded with a Membership Appreciation Reception providing everyone an opportunity for fellowship and great food.

On Wednesday morning, Clem Wethington demonstrated New Tools for Building Better Utilities (recordkeeping and reporting); Vernon Brown, USDA Rural Development, and John Covington, KIA, led a team discussion on Filling the Infrastructure Gap for Water & Wastewater Utilities. Sessions concluded with a presentation on Diversity-Stregthening Relationships by Recognizing Differences, by Barbara Crow, Water Utility Professional.

Kentucky’s Best Tasting Water Luncheon and contest finished off the successful conference. Guest Speaker, John Padalino, Special Assistant, Office of the Administrator, USDA Rural Delevopment, provided an update on Rural Development funding and activities, while a panel of judges including Gene Birk of WBKO News; Paulette McKinney, Insurors of Kentucky; John Covington, KIA; Barbara Crow, Water Professional; Vernon Brown, USDA Rural Development; and Jimmy Adcock, Public Service Commission, were trying to determine the Best Tasting Water in Kentucky from a total of 17 water samples provided by utilities competing for the coveted award. Hardin County County Water District #2 was chosen to have the ”tastiest” water, with second place awarded to Manchester Water & Sewer; and third place going to Warren County Water District.

Because of the quality of the drinking water from Hardin County Water District #2, Kentucky has a great chance of winning the national Best Tasting Water Contest in Washington, D.C., during the Rural Water Rally, an annual legislative event for the 48 state affiliates of the National Rural Water Association.