National Guidelines on Physical Security for Water, Wastewater, & Stormwater Facilities—WHEN?

The EPA Water Infrastructure Security Enhancements (WISE) cooperative agreement process to arrive at national U.S. standard guidelines was started in 2003. Both the ASCE Codes and Standards Committee (CSC) and the EWRI Standards Development Council (SDC) approved the WISE Standards Committee (WISE SC) during the same year in order to process any document by the ASCE Rules for Standards Committees. After EPA decided in December 2004 that three documents were worthy of publication; they approved and paid for the printing of those Phase 1 documents by ASCE (Online Contaminated Systems Monitoring guidelines), AWWA (Interim Voluntary Security Guidance for Water Utilities), and WEF (Interim Voluntary Security Guidance for Wastewater/Stormwater Utilities). In late 2005 EPA approved (1) Standard Guidelines for the Physical Security of Water Utilities (PSWU) and (2) Similar document on Wastewater/Stormwater Utilities to be printed as Drafts in December 2006 (www.asce.org/wise). After a six month ANSI review period on these two documents, the ASCE Codes & Standards Committee decided that the two documents should be taken through an unfunded ASCE/EWRI consensus balloting process. Moreover, the two documents were updated with the approved WISE SC 2007 suggested revisions to the Dec. 2006 documents. The PSWU draft guideline had the 1st unfunded ASCE web-based balloting process completed in June 2008 and the 1st PS of WW/SW Utilities ballot was completed in July 2008. Both draft guidelines were balloted again by the WISE SC during 2009. Whenever the two versions of the guidelines were approved by the WISE SC with no unresolved negatives, then the Chair obtained final approval for the two draft standard guidelines for the ASCE Public Comment period. The ASCE Public Comment period on each document was approved by the EWRI SDC and the ASCE CSC. From comments during the ASCE Public Comment period; the WISE SC could approve editorials or even change portions of the two draft guidelines depending on substantive suggestions from the comments. For an American National Standard to occur from either one of the two drafts approved by ASCE/EWRI, the same process must be followed by the ANSI prior to the approval to use that designation.