Mission | Water Innovation Network for Sustainable Small Systems

The Water Innovation Network for Sustainable Small Systems (WINSSS) brings together a national team of experts to transform drinking water treatment for small water systems (SWS) to meet the urgent need for state-of-the-art innovation, development, demonstration, and implementation of treatment, information, and process technologies in part by leveraging existing relationships with industry through the Massachusetts Water Cluster. The mission of WINSSS is to build a national center that spans and links the continuum of technology acceptance for small water systems:

The WINSSS Center is working to facilitate a clear pathway for innovation implementation by creating the following outputs: (i) novel approaches to treating grouped contaminants such as organic carbon, trace organics, disinfection by-products, and nitrogenous compounds, (ii) demonstrate and pilot promising technologies previously developed under EPA’s STAR program and other programs which will address the contaminants above as well as metals such as As, Fe, Mn, and Cr, and other inorganics such as F and sulfide, (iii) standardized testing requirements for multiple states, (iv) tools to simplify system operations such as an asset management app and a distributed sensing and monitoring notification system, (v) an extensive outreach system including a website, newsletter, workshops and presentations, webinars and educational modules, and (vi) a technology analysis database for determining a technology's suitability for implementation in small systems considering energy, sustainability, robustness, human health, and human, regulatory and system acceptance.

WINSSS is one of two national centers for small drinking water systems funded by the USEPA under the STAR program. The other is the University of Colorado's DeRISK Center. For more on DeRISK, please see their website.