A new document, Water Security Initiative: Guidance for Building Laboratory Capabilities to Respond to Drinking Water Contamination, has been released by EPA to assist utilities in developing a sampling and analysis program as part of a Contaminant Warning System. The document provides an overview of the role of sampling and analysis in a community water system and provides a framework for building laboratory capabilities for response to water contamination. It also presents contaminant classes of concern to water security, lists methods for a representative number of contaminants from those classes and provides information on the role of national laboratory networks in responding to drinking water contamination events.
The new guidance, along with many additional water security-related documents, can be downloaded from EPA’s Water Security Initiative Webpage.