Innovation

WWEMA members continually innovate to enhance their products, develop new technologies to address emerging environmental challenges, and improve efficiency and cost-competitiveness. WWEMA actively supports these efforts by collaborating with industry stakeholders to remove barriers and reduce unnecessary costs associated with adopting and using members’ products. Through education and advocacy, WWEMA promotes innovation to legislators, regulators, and state and local decision-makers. These efforts extend beyond technological advancements, driving transformative innovation across areas such as funding, policy, and broader engagement in the water industry and beyond.

WWEMA:

• Supports the Water Environment Federation’s Leaders Innovation Forum for Technology (LIFT) program to promote adoption of innovative technologies and practices.
• Sits on the Science Advisory Board of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Design of Risk-Reducing, Innovative-implementable Small-system Knowledge (DeRISK) Center that was formed in 2014 to identify, develop, demonstrate and facilitate widespread acceptance and applicability of novel and innovative technologies and approaches to measure or treat groups of microbiological or chemical contaminants, or their precursors.
• Supports EPA’s Environmental Technology Innovation Cluster program with a number of members participating in clusters around the country.
• Contributes to EPA’s Water Innovation and Technology Blueprint and related technology initiatives.
• In March 2013, co-hosted with the U.S. Water Alliance an Innovating for Water’s Future roundtable, bringing together industry leaders to discuss how to eliminate the barriers to the development and adoption of new technologies within the water industry.
• Co-chaired a technical session at the American Water Works Association ACE13, ACE14, and ACE15 conventions on Overcoming Barriers to Innovative Technology.