Sponsors
The bill pilots wastewater surveillance across military installations to improve infectious disease and drug-use detection and to build interoperable data systems, trading meaningful public-health and readiness benefits against privacy risks, potential enforcement misuse, and implementation costs.
Service members at covered military installations will get earlier detection and improved health monitoring of infectious disease outbreaks through wastewater surveillance, which can help protect force readiness and reduce mission disruption.
Service members and military health programs will gain data on population-level use of Schedule I/II drugs at installations, enabling more targeted prevention, treatment, and public-health interventions.
The Department of Defense and military health systems will develop standardized wastewater data systems and interoperable surveillance technologies across installations, improving coordination and long-term monitoring capacity.
Service members at covered installations may face privacy and civil‑liberty concerns because wastewater surveillance can reveal drug-use patterns tied to specific locations.
Service members could be subject to disciplinary or legal action if wastewater-derived drug-use data are used for enforcement rather than strictly for public-health interventions, discouraging care-seeking and harming trust.
Taxpayers and DoD budgets may bear implementation costs and staff time demands for the pilot, potentially diverting resources from other defense priorities or programs.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Directs the Defense Secretary to start a two-year wastewater surveillance pilot at ≥4 military installations to monitor certain schedule I/II drug use and infectious diseases, and report results to Congress.
Introduced November 7, 2025 by Elissa Slotkin · Last progress November 7, 2025
Requires the Secretary of Defense to start, within 180 days of enactment, a two-year pilot program to build and run a wastewater surveillance system at at least four military installations to detect use of certain controlled drugs and monitor infectious diseases. The pilot must use appropriate technologies, a uniform DoD data system, include at least one site focused on covered-drug monitoring and one focused on infectious-disease monitoring, use existing DoD resources where appropriate, and deliver a report to congressional defense committees within 90 days after the pilot ends with findings and recommendations. Defines “covered drug” as drugs on schedules I or II under federal law, with an exclusion for drugs newly scheduled or drugs approved within the prior 20 years; the legislation does not specify new appropriations and directs the Secretary to rely on existing DoD authorities and resources as practicable.