Council Member Kathryn Sorensen discusses various drinking water concepts over this SWDA short-form video series. These informational videos are based on the newly released book, Safe Drinking Water Act: The Next Fifty Years, which explores the vision for drinking water over the next fifty years, aging water infrastructure, consumer confidence reports, and the need to prioritize relative risks in drinking water.
Kathryn speaks about her chapter in the recent book and what her aim was when providing her contribution. After her long career and becoming an expert in the industry, she outlines a vision for the next fifty years in drinking water. A broad goal that policymakers, water experts, communities, and public should work towards to ensure safe and reliable for everyone for the next fifty years of the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Consumer confidence reports were instituted to help educate the public about their tap water and provide more transparency about today’s drinking water. Unfortunately, they missed the mark, now providing more uneasiness within the public than reassurance.
America’s drinking water infrastructure has received a C- by the ASCE. A majority of the nation’s water infrastructure is over 50 years old, and requires modernization and investment. Supplying drinking water is an essential part of ensuring public health and safety, and needs to be prioritized amongst all the other challenges.
Kathryn discusses the problem with fueling the regulatory treadmill of non-stop chasing new contaminants. While contaminants are a concern for drinking water, other threats to safe drinking water are becoming more concerning and receiving less support. Listen to the other various risks threatening safe drinking water and why certain threats need to be prioritized before others in order to best serve the public with reliable and clean drinking water.
Council Member Kathryn Sorensen contributed recently released book, and this video series showcases her brilliance about all things drinking water.
Learn more about these insights by reading the open-access book here.