Sponsors (3)
Introduced March 25, 2025 by Janice D. Schakowsky · Last progress March 25, 2025
The bill uses modest federal funds to expand Water ISAC participation and strengthen water-sector threat detection and preparedness—improving public-health and service resilience for many communities—while creating modest federal cost, sustainability risks for smaller utilities if funding lapses, and some data-privacy concerns.
Community water systems and publicly owned treatment works gain improved threat monitoring and faster detection/response to contamination or attacks via expanded Water ISAC participation, improving public-health protection for the communities they serve.
Federal coordination with the Water ISAC strengthens preparedness for natural hazards and malevolent acts, reducing the risk of service interruptions and cascading public-safety impacts.
Local water systems (community water systems and treatment works) receive federal funding to join and maintain Water ISAC membership, lowering direct costs and increasing the likelihood that smaller or resource-constrained utilities participate.
Smaller and resource-constrained utilities could become dependent on federal offsets for Water ISAC membership, creating sustainability risks and potential service gaps if funding ends after FY2027.
Expanded incident data collection and sharing raises confidentiality and infrastructure-security concerns for some utilities if robust privacy and access safeguards are not specified.
Taxpayers face increased federal spending (about $20 million total over FY2026–2027) to finance the program, which may compete with other budget priorities.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Directs EPA to set up a program to boost Water ISAC participation, offset membership costs for water systems, expand threat data sharing, and authorizes $10M for each of FY2026 and FY2027.
Requires the EPA to create and run a program, within one year of enactment, that boosts participation in the Water Information Sharing and Analysis Center (Water ISAC) by community water systems and treatment works, pays membership costs for those systems, expands EPA cooperation with the Water ISAC on incident data and threat analysis, and improves Water ISAC tools to better monitor and prepare water systems for cyberattacks, other malevolent acts, and natural hazards. Authorizes $10,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2026 and 2027 (available until expended) to carry out these activities and ties key terms to existing Safe Drinking Water Act and Clean Water Act definitions.