SEWER Act
Official title: To amend the Public Health Service Act to require the Secretary to award grants, contracts, or cooperative agreements to eligible entities to establish, mainta… Show full official titleShow less
Official title: To amend the Public Health Service Act to require the Secretary to award grants, contracts, or cooperative agreements to eligible entities to establish, maintain, or improve activities related to the detection and monitoring of infectious diseases through wastewater for public health emergency preparedness and response purposes, and for other purposes.
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Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
Surveilling Effluent Water for Epidemic Response Act or the SEWER Act
This bill provides statutory authority for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS) program, which detects and monitors pathogens in wastewater. It requires the CDC to expand and intensify the activities of the NWSS, including with respect to SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19), influenza, mpox, dengue, West Nile virus, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
The NWSS provides funding and guidance to public health departments for wastewater surveillance activities. Under the NWSS, health departments and other partners coordinate on wastewater surveillance at sampling sites and share data with the CDC. The NWSS was initially implemented to monitor SARS-CoV-2 and has since expanded to include influenza A, avian influenza A, mpox, and RSV.
- Introduced in House Formatted Text PDF Formatted XML
Cite this page
U.S. Congress. (2026). H.R. 766: SEWER Act. 119th Congress. Open America. https://openamerica.io/bill/119-HR-766/
"H.R. 766: SEWER Act." 119th Congress, 2026, Open America, https://openamerica.io/bill/119-HR-766/.
H.R. 766, 119th Cong. (2026), https://openamerica.io/bill/119-HR-766/.
[H.R. 766: SEWER Act](https://openamerica.io/bill/119-HR-766/)