Trainers use NETCSC's Regulatory Update to educate local officials

After attending the Regulatory Update: Recent and
Upcoming Requirements for Small Communities workshop
at NETCSC’s 2002 Environmental Training Institute for
Small Communities last August, Brian Mark and Bill Urbigkit
decided to add these course materials to the NETCSC
training modules they were already using to educate local
officials in Wyoming.

Bill Urbigkit (left), director of public works for the city of Riverton, Wyoming, and Brian Mark, with the Wyoming Department of Enivornmental Quality, have incorporated NETCSC materials into the successful workshops they conduct for local officals in Wyoming. Photo by Jill A. Ross.

Mark, State Revolving Fund program principal for Wyoming’s Department of Environmental Quality, and Urbigkit, director of public works for the city of Riverton, Wyoming, have relied on NETCSC's 10-module curriculum, Managing a Small Drinking Water System: A Short Course for Local Officials, for workshops they’ve given across the state over the past several years. Mayors, council members, directors of public works, town clerks,
and operators attend their workshops.

"Those of us in the water and sewage business
often take for granted some of the basic principles that are completely foreign to folks who don't make their livelihoods in this business," says Mark. "NETCSC's modules provide the neccesary information for local officials to begin to understand what comprises their systems, how their systems function, who is responsible—or should be responsible, when regulations will affect their systems, and why they need to take an active role in their systems’ existence."

Mark found that NETCSC’s new Regulatory Update materials complemented and built upon the Managing A Small Drinking Water System modules. And because the newer materials provide more detailed information, they have helped Mark and Urbigkit to offer a better, more comprehensive workshop.

"This recent update is such a great piece of information because we can go over there and talk about it but I don’t think there’s a human being alive who can cite every regulation that’s on the books," Mark explains. "We can hit the big points, and then we give them copies so they can have them as a reference."

Workshop attendees appreciate the materials, too. "People realize they’re going to have to comply with the requirements from the 1996 amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act," says Mark, "so they’re glad to be informed. They’d rather know what’s coming than be struck blindside."