The COVID-19 pandemic has presented multiple preparedness and response challenges to state and territorial primacy agencies. In order to develop an understanding of the potential impacts to state and territorial drinking water programs, the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators (ASDWA) surveyed its members in April to assess how their Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) implementation processes may be changing, and how ASDWA could potentially use the survey results in in its ongoing dialogue with the U.S. EPA on going COVID-19 preparedness and response issue. The survey questions were organized in the following categories:
- Business Designation
- Compliance Monitoring
- Lab Capacity
- Operators
- Inspections
According to the survey, almost all respondents indicated that their state is experiencing business closures, but the vast majority also answered that their state has deemed engineering staff designated to assist issuing emergency permits or conduct emergency design work, construction crews that can make emergency repairs, operators, all state safe drinking water program staff, and state labs as essential or life-sustaining. Almost all states also confirmed that they currently have a process or plan to share operators if affected by illness.
ASDWA received responses from 25 states, representing nine of the 10 EPA regions. The full summary results can be found here.
Source: ASDWA
