On October 23, from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. ET, EPA's Watershed Academy will host a webinar for water-quality managers and others to learn about the new Water-Quality Portal for water-quality data The portal brings together chemical, physical and microbiological data from EPA's Storage and Retrieval Data Warehouse and USGS's National Water Information System for scientists, policy-makers, and the public in a single, user-friendly web interface, while reducing the burden of searching, compiling, and formatting water monitoring data for analysis.

EPA has scheduled the first in a series of webcasts built around the core elements of its February 2012 handbook, “Planning for Sustainability: A Handbook for Water and Wastewater Utilities.” Effective planning is essential for utilities to sustainably manage their operations and ensure that water infrastructure investments are cost-effective over their life-cycle, resource-efficient, and support other relevant community sustainability goals.