SDWA Deadlines
By Patti Kay Wisniewski, US EPA
The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) section 1433 America's Water Infrastructure Act (AWIA) requires community water systems (CWSs) serving more than 3,300 people to prepare or revise risk and resilience assessments (RRAs) and emergency response plans (ERPs) and to certify to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that this work has been completed. CWSs must review, revise (where applicable), and recertify their RRA and ERP to EPA every five years.
If your water system serves a population of 100,000 or greater, in accordance with SDWA section 1433, your RRA certification statement to EPA is due on or before March 31, 2025, and your ERP certification statement to EPA is due on or before September 30, 2025.
To update the email or physical address EPA used to contact you, please update the PWSID contact information on file with your state drinking water primacy agency, as the EPA receives updated PWSID contact information from primacy agencies quarterly. Also let me know, as I maintain an email group to reach systems with EPA news.
For information on how to certify your RRA or ERP, please visit EPA’s How to Certify website. EPA strongly recommends that you electronically submit your CWS certification statements, as this is the only reporting method for which EPA will provide an acknowledgement of receipt. Note that EPA Shared CROMERRR Services (SCS) account usernames and passwords are created for an individual certifier, not for an organization. If your CWS has a new certifying official, the new certifying official should create their own account following the steps in EPA’s PDF document tutorial or video tutorial.
CWSs should NOT submit the RRA or ERP to EPA; only the certification is required. This is a self-certification process; however, EPA retains the right to request a copy of the RRA and/or ERP to determine compliance with the requirements of SDWA 1433.
More on these SDWA 1433 requirements, as well as information and tools to assist CWSs in complying with the law, are available on EPA’s RRA and ERP website. Please note that EPA recently published updated versions of the Small Systems RRA Checklist, Vulnerability Self-Assessment Tool (VSAT), and ERP Template that have a new “Checklist of Priority Cybersecurity Practices for Water Systems.” If you used previous versions of these documents, please complete this new cybersecurity checklist and add it to your RRA and/or ERP.
Please register here to join an EPA webinar on how to develop or update an RRA and ERP.
If you need assistance, have questions, or find any information incorrect, you may contact me (Patti Kay Wisniewski) or dwresilience@epa.gov.
Patti Kay Wisniewski
Drinking Water Preparedness and Resiliency Coordinator
US EPA Region 3
Drinking Water Section (3WD21)
1650 Arch Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103
Office: 215-814-5668
Cell: 215-514-7893
Email: Wisniewski.patti-kay@epa.gov
(note the hyphen appears in email only)