°®¶¹´«Ã½

The Honorable Robert Garcia 1305 Longworth House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515 U.S. House of Representatives

The Honorable Don Bacon 2104 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515 U.S. House of Representatives

Dear Representatives Robert Garcia and Don Bacon:

°®¶¹´«Ã½ (ASM), on behalf of our more than 32,000 members in the °®¶¹´«Ã½ States and around the world, thank you for your ongoing efforts in strengthening the U.S. National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS) and for introducing the Surveilling Effluent Water for Epidemic Response (SEWER) Act. If enacted, the bill (H.R. 9008) would authorize the NWSS at $150 million for each fiscal year from FY25–FY29.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) launched NWSS in September 2020 to enhance wastewater testing capacity in public health laboratories, training to ensure a robust workforce and more effective data analysis and visualization tools to serve as an early warning system for the emergence of COVID-19 in a community. Wastewater surveillance offers an efficient way to monitor pathogens in sewer sheds that serve several thousand to several million residents and empowers local leaders to launch protective measures that best serve their communities.

Sustained investment for NWSS is critical for our public health infrastructure to continuously and efficiently monitor disease outbreaks beyond COVID-19, including the seasonal flu, mpox, dengue, norovirus, West Nile virus, H5N1 and antimicrobial resistant pathogens. However, its future is uncertain as the current network is funded through emergency supplemental funding. Without sustained funding, this important program could be forced to shut down despite its efficiency, popularity and the potential to use the system for monitoring and detecting disease outbreaks beyond COVID-19.  

Thank you for your work in introducing the SEWER Act to authorize the National Wastewater Surveillance System. ASM strongly encourages Congress to authorize and fund this pivotal program to quickly and efficiently detect and prevent the spread of infectious disease outbreaks. If we can be of further assistance, please have your staff contact Nick Cox, Senior Federal Affairs Officer at the American Society for °®¶¹´«Ã½, at ncox@asmusa.org.

Sincerely,


Amalia Corby
Director of Federal Affairs
American Society for °®¶¹´«Ã½