WEF Hosts Meeting with U.S. EPA and Department of Energy

On June 10, the Water Environment Federation (WEF; Alexandria, Va.) hosted a meeting with representatives from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Energy on creating the regulatory space to foster technology and approaches to innovation in the water sector. Leaders Innovation Forum for Technology (LIFT) sponsored the meeting. LIFT is a program of WEF and the Water Environment Research Foundation (WERF; Alexandria, Va.) designed to help move innovation into practice in the water quality sector.

The participants explored potential challenges to adopting technology and innovative approaches in the water sector. Meeting attendees will work to help develop a framework to address these challenges.

WEF plans to use the practices and suggestions from the meeting for the WEF-led portion of LIFT, the Creating the Space to Innovate project. The project seeks to identify major influences to innovation in the water utility sector; identify measures to manage or share risk by providing regulatory space for innovation through permit flexibility in compliance schedules or different kinds of permits; and address perceived challenges in some states with permitting new technologies.