Last month Rep Crawford (R,AR) introduced HR 2594 (no fancy name). The bill would require the EPA to craft regulations providing for the certification of an independent Water Risk and Resilience Organization (WRRO) seemingly similar to NERC in the electric sector. The bill would authorize $10 million dollars to initially fund the WRRO.
The bill is very similar to HR 7922 introduced by Crawford in April of 2024. No action was taken on that bill in the 118th Congress. There are a large number of editorial changes made in this latest version of the bill that have little or no impact on the legislative intent.
Moving Forward
Crawford is a member, as is his sole cosponsor {Rep Duarte (R,CA)}, of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to which this bill was assigned for primary consideration. This means that there may be sufficient influence to see it considered in Committee. I expect that any number of small communities are going to pressure their representatives to oppose this legislation as it would end up increasing the costs of maintaining their water systems. Many mid to large size water systems will also object, again because of funding issues. I suspect that there will be significant bipartisan opposition to this bill based upon those objections.
I do not expect this bill to move forward, especially since there is no cosponsor on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, to which this bill has been assigned for secondary consideration. That Committee is well known for guarding their prerogatives when they have even limited oversight responsibilities.
Commentary
The change from an annual
funding authorization to a single
funding amount (…“$10,000,000 to remain available to the WRRO until
expended.”) better reflects the fact that §1(h)
firmly establishes that the “The WRRO is not a department, agency, or
instrumentality of the United States Government.” The only other funding source
for the WRRO provided for in this bill is the retention of the of the penalties
by the WRRO for any enforcement actions taken by the organization. This would
seem to ensure that the WRRO would be quick to undertake formal enforcement
actions rather that work with water agencies to increase their resilience to
cybersecurity risks. This could be problematic for the vast majority of covered
water systems that are smaller systems financed by local governments agencies.
An annual funding mechanism, while certainly an anathema to the current
Republican controlled congress, could help to ensure that the focus of the WRRO
is more on helping these smaller water agencies than on collecting penalties.
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