President's Message

As I recommence into my 5th year as your association President, I (again) thank you for your support and look forward to representing all of you as the President of the Rhode Island Clean Water Association in 2024.

As I mentioned at our Holiday Party, 2023 was another great year because of the hard work of our Board and especially the continuous support of all our sponsors. Looking forward to carrying the momentum into 2024, and to view our calendar of events, please go on our website for all upcoming events at https://ricwa.org/events-2.

Speaking of events, our first will be the Legislative Event that’s scheduled for Thursday, February 8th between 1pm and 3pm at the RI State House in the House of Representative Lounge. In addition to our round table discussions, RICWA will be awarding Senator Alana DiMario the Legislative of the Year Award.

For the 2024 Board of Directors, please click on the following link: https://ricwa.org/board-of-directors. Speaking of our Board, I wanted to thank four of the members, who decided not to return for 2024, for their dedicated time and contributions: David Perrotta (East Greenwich Asst. Superintendent), Ryan Derosiers (Ops Supervisor for Veolia-Cranston), Kevin Regan (Superintendent for Veolia-Smithfield), and most notably Paul Desrosiers (Technical Advisor for Operations for NBC).

Mr. Desrosiers first became a member in 1982, when it was called the NWPCA. He was on the Board of Director’s in the mid 80’s, Vice President in the 80’ and 90’s, President from 1994 through 1995, Board of Directors again in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, and somewhere in between all these years he was the RI Director for NEWEA. Most of all, he was selected to represent the association as the Certification Board Representative from 2004 through 2023 even though his term officially ends on January 31, 2024. On a personal note, Paul was one of my mentors early in my wastewater career, and he taught the Operator class at CCRI back in 1997 (wow…26 years ago) when I earned my Operator’s Licenses. The Board thanks him for his years of guidance and contributions through the years and wishes him nothing but the best. Our website has a member spotlight on him, which you can read by clicking on the following link:
https://ricwa.org/2023/03/20/17877

One other announcement that I would like to make is RICWA is proud of our current Past President, Scott Goodinson (Superintendent at the Narragansett WWTF) who will be the 2024 NEWEA President. GOOD LUCK SCOTT!

During all our events, we emphasize that we would like to provide training for our fellow wastewater members, and we would like to hear from you as to which training topics you would like. Please let us know so that we can accommodate your needs to advance in your career by contacting Mike Digiovangiacomo at [email protected]. One way to advance your knowledge and networking is to join our Ops Challenge Team. If you have any questions regarding our Ops Challenge events, fund raising or joining the Rising Sludge Team, please contact Ed Davies at [email protected].

For our Ops Exchange program, we are looking for one of our members who’d be interested in going to Massachusetts the week of May 13th to visit some treatment facilities and attend their Trade Show. We will be sending an e-mail to the Superintendents to see if they could allow one of our members to attend. For more information on this, please click on the following link: https://ricwa.org/operator-exchange.

Our Awards Banquet is scheduled for Friday, May 10th, and we would like you to start considering nominations for the individual awards. Please click on the following link: https://ricwa.org/annual-awards, which will be updated shortly.

We encourage all our members to go onto our web site and look at it as we continue to update it…or as we say, a work in progress! If you wish to drop us a line, please go to our web site at https://ricwa.org because we like to hear from you on any thoughts, ideas, or training topics you like to see us provide.

Like every year, the continuous support from our members, sponsors and others helps us maintain the high level of standard that we set to make sure that you get something out of this association, and we THANK all of you!

If you wish to become a member of the RICWA, please click on this link: https://ricwa.org/membership.

On behalf of the entire Board, we look forward to seeing all of you interacting during our events and training sessions throughout 2024.

Sincerely,

Peter J. Connell