What is America's Water Infrastructure Act (AWIA)?

What it is

AWIA amended the Safe Drinking Water Act. Its best known provision requires community water systems to assess risks from natural hazards and malevolent acts, including cyber threats, to their physical infrastructure, monitoring practices, financial systems, chemical handling and operations and maintenance.

After the assessment, each system must prepare or update an emergency response plan that addresses the risks found. Systems certify completion to the EPA rather than submitting the documents themselves.

Assessments and plans must be reviewed and recertified every five years. Deadlines were staggered by system size.

Who it applies to

Community water systems in the United States serving more than 3,300 people. Check EPA guidance for current certification deadlines and requirements.

In practice the work involves operations, engineering, IT and emergency management staff, because the assessment covers physical assets, control and data systems, and the people and procedures that run them.

What evidence it needs

The assessment draws on knowledge of assets, their condition and how the system is monitored and operated.

• An inventory of critical assets
• Monitoring practices and data systems
• Operations and maintenance records
• The emergency response plan and its certification

How Aqueduct helps

Asset health and monitoring records support the operational side of the assessment. Aqueduct can be deployed on-prem where data must stay on site.

• Asset observability for pumps, valves and meters across the network
• aQ WaterGuard monitoring records for flows, pressures and losses
• aQ PredictIQ condition trends on critical assets
• On-prem deployment on NVIDIA infrastructure where data cannot leave the site