Key Takeaways Utilities with environmental laboratories can monitor water and wastewater treatment plant processes and water quality from source, through distribution, and to the consumer's tap. “Best laboratory practices” are criteria intended to ensure that environmental laboratories produce reliable and defensible water quality data that comply with regulatory requirements. Accreditation and robust quality control and quality assurance, ethics, safety, and other laboratory program criteria support data integrity and protection of public health.

The water sector has an ongoing responsibility to provide safe, reliable drinking water. It is with this sentiment that AWWA has undertaken its landmark Water 2050 initiative (www.awwa.org/water2050), convening a series of topical think-tank gatherings to "collaboratively imagine the water future we want to create." To support this initiative, AWWA's Water Quality Technology Division is dedicating a series of Water Quality Matters columns to developing this vision through the respective lenses of each of the division's 15 committees. A WWA's Water 2050 initiative involves imagining how roles within the water industry may change in the future. Part of this involves understanding current directions, but it's also important to look to the past to see how things have changed over time. Although many things in the water industry will change, the common goals of protecting public health and the environment will remain. How many of these goals are realized will rely on advancements in water utility laboratories.

Key Takeaways The environmental laboratory workforce is aging out and needs creative solutions to recruit and retain skilled staff to perform physical, microbial, chemical, and radiological tests. There are immediate needs for chemists to work in radiochemistry and to conduct analyses for per‐ and polyfluoroalkyl substances and other contaminants of emerging concern. Promoting the water and wastewater industry and developing the industry workforce require education through public outreach, internships, fellowships, and citizen science.

Understanding that sample collection quality assurance/quality control can make or break water quality data reliability is key for operators to make informed decisions.

You can take the plant operator out of the laboratory, but you can't completely remove the need for the laboratory from the operator. Plant operations are fundamentally tied to the laboratory. One of the goals of the AWWA Water Quality Laboratory Committee is to disseminate information that can be used by plant operators.