March 18, 2025

Helping Our Clients With AWIA Risk and Emergency Updates

Water systems across the country are working to meet their five-year deadlines for recertifying their risk and resilience assessments and emergency response plans as required under the America’s Water Infrastructure Act (AWIA) of 2018. The program’s goal is to keep water supplies safe by assessing each system’s vulnerability to risks from natural and man-made hazards and developing plans for improved resilience and emergency response against those risks.

Whatever your system’s size, Freese and Nichols’ nationwide team of water and wastewater engineers can help complete updates to your Risk and Resilience Assessment (RRA) and Emergency Response Plan (ERP). We can support systems in planning solutions for needs highlighted by their risk assessment and help new or newly qualified systems create an RRA and ERP.

A timeline of the current round of deadlines is shown below.

Current Actions Water Systems Should Be Taking

• Review the AWIA Risk and Resilience Assessment and Emergency Response Plan you certified in 2020-21.
• Consider changes that have occurred since then, such as new drinking water facilities, changes to the water supply, and actions taken in response to natural disasters or cybersecurity events.
• Consult the chart below to determine your deadline based on population. (See more on the EPA website.)
• Once your update is completed, submit compliance certification to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

How Freese and Nichols Can Help

Our nationwide team of water and wastewater engineers can help systems complete recertification of RRA and ERP, and we can help new systems or newly qualified systems create an RRA and ERP.

• We have extensive experience developing Risk Assessments, Risk Management Plans and Evaluations, and Resilience Programs for water utilities from less than 3,000 population to more than a million.
• We’ve also recently helped navigate EPA audits of RRA and ERP submissions.
• We assisted communities with 70 RRAs and ERPs during the first round of certification and understand the AWIA-specific requirements and tools available.
• We can support systems in planning solutions for needs highlighted by their risk assessment.

Contact: Julie Huerta, julie.huerta@freese.com