Congressional Research Service Release AWIA Report

On March 28th, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) released a report that summarizes the drinking water provisions of America’s Water Infrastructure Act of 2018 (AWIA, P.L. 115-270). This report is worth a read, as each new provision is summarized in a few paragraphs with plenty of footnotes and references for those that want to delve into more detail about this significant drinking water legislation.

EPA is in the midst of planning out the implementation of the AWIA requirements, as some of the significant deadlines are next year (2020). Water systems serving greater than 100,000 people have to submit their certification of completion for a risk and resilience assessment by March 30, 2020 and other system sizes have deadlines soon thereafter. EPA is developing information to assist systems in completing the risk and resiliency assessments (as well as emergency response plans based on what’s learned in the assessments) and will release its tool, compliance factsheet, and certification process this summer, as well as conduct some training. EPA also has to finalize two regulations by October 2020 – the first regulation will focus on improving the readability and accuracy of the Consumer Confidence Reports (CCRs) and the second regulation will focus on consolidation consideration – states can (it’s a possibility, not a requirement) require a water system to consider options for consolidation. EPA has lots of work to do on AWIA implementation.