Have You Tried TRWA's Water/Wastewater Risk Assessment and Planning Tool?

Have You Tried TRWA's Water/ Wastewater Assessment and Planning Tool?

By Allison Kaminsky, Deputy Executive Director, TRWA

TRWA is pleased to offer of our Water/ Wastewater Risk Assessment and Planning Tool (WRAPT) to our members free of charge! We launched WRAPT shortly after the new year to help our member systems meet requirements set forth by the America’s Water Infrastructure Act of 2018 (AWIA).

Among other provisions, the act requires community water systems serving a population of more than 3,300 to develop or update risk and resilience assessments (RRA) and emergency response plans (ERP) for their systems. This includes assessing the security of any electronic, computer or other automated systems the utility uses. Affected utilities then must review their RRA and ERP at least once every five years to determine if it should be revised. Upon completion of review, the system must submit to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) a certification that the documents have been reviewed and revised, if applicable.

TRWA's WRAPT is a cloud-based program that uses logic-based questions to help systems complete their RRA and ERP. The way you answer the questions prompts additional questions for you to consider when completing the tool. Members can plug in their PWS ID to prepopulate some fields to reduce data entry, and the information you input in some fields carries throughout the tool. Once all questions are completed, WRAPT generates the reports required by the EPA that can be saved as a PDF for the system’s records. The tool also includes certification documents and instructions on how to self-submit certification to the EPA.

The due dates for these certifications are based on system size. Systems serving a population of 3,301-49,999 will need to complete their RRA and submit certification to the EPA by June 30, 2021. Once you’ve certified completion of your RRA, you will have 6 months from that date to complete and certify your ERP. The final ERP compliance deadline for systems in this group is December 31, 2021. Future certification deadlines will be five years after the initial certification.

Systems that serve 3,300 or less population are also recommended to complete an RRA and ERP as it is a good business practice to have these developed so that you are more resilient in emergency situations. In some instances, TCEQ requires them.

WRAPT is a free benefit for all TRWA utility members, and we will retain your account and securely store your information for as long as you maintain an active membership status. This will enable our users to review, revise and recertify their documents every five years to retain compliance quickly and easily.

To sign up for WRAPT, email wrapt@trwa.org and we will grant you access. Once you have signed up, if you have questions about how to answer any of the questions in the tool, please contact your Circuit Rider. We are also hosting monthly information sessions on the tool for new and exiting users where our staff are readily able to demo features and answer questions. For information on the next scheduled session, visit www.trwa.org/wrapt.

We are very excited to provide this new benefit to our members, and we hope this tool eases the compliance burden for affected systems. If you have questions about this article, you may email the author at Allison.Kaminsky@trwa.org or call 512-472-8591.