Governance & Ethics

Structure

• The Council — sets the Standard, fees, and policy. Meets quarterly.
• Certification Committee — reviews applications, audit reports, blind-sample results, and complaints; grants, suspends, and revokes certification.
• Appeals Committee — hears appeals of any Certification Committee decision. Members may not sit on both committees, and no member who took part in a decision may hear its appeal.
• Assessors — contracted laboratory professionals with at least five years' bench and quality experience in drinking water analysis, trained to the DWLCA audit protocol and re-qualified annually.

Impartiality rules

1. DWLCA does not analyze water samples for any customer and holds no ownership in any laboratory.
2. An assessor may not audit a laboratory they have owned, worked for, consulted for, or directly competed with in the prior five years, or where a family member works.
3. Assessors are paid a fixed rate per audit, never a percentage of fees, and have no financial stake in the outcome.
4. Council and committee members must disclose any relationship with a laboratory under discussion and recuse themselves.
5. Fees are fixed and published. No laboratory is offered a different price or a different Standard.

Code of ethics

Every Council member, committee member, assessor, and employee signs the DWLCA Code of Ethics annually. In brief:

• Act only in the interest of accurate drinking water data and the public that relies on it.
• Report findings exactly as observed — never softened, never exaggerated.
• Keep laboratory confidential information confidential, except status information the public is entitled to.
• Accept no gift, meal, travel, or favor from a laboratory beyond ordinary courtesy.
• Raise concerns about DWLCA's own conduct through the same complaint process laboratories and the public use.

Appeals

Any laboratory may appeal a finding, suspension, revocation, or denial in writing within 30 days of notice. The Appeals Committee reviews the record, may request additional information from either side, and issues a written decision within 30 days. A laboratory may be represented by counsel. Appeals decisions are final within DWLCA.

Public records

The following are always public on this site: the Standard, the fee schedule, every certified laboratory's status and scopes, suspension and revocation notices (with dates), and this governance page. Audit reports, complaint details, and the identities of Council members and assessors are confidential.

Council membership

For the privacy and impartiality of the people who serve, DWLCA does not publish the names of Council members, committee members, or assessors. This is deliberate: assessors who cannot be looked up cannot be lobbied, pressured, or courted by the laboratories they evaluate. Every member is bound by the Code of Ethics and the impartiality rules above, and the Council's decisions are accountable through the appeals process. Interested in serving? Contact us.