EPA Releases Supply Chain Resilience Products for Utilities

To prepare for future supply chain disruptions and increase the sector’s overall resilience, EPA developed resources and data about supply chains for 46 chemicals that are critical to the water treatment process.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, a series of supply chain disruptions have threatened the supply of chemicals necessary to treat drinking water and wastewater. To help alleviate future potential disruptions EPA created the following products:

• Water Treatment Chemical Supply Chain Profiles: provide a description of the supply chains for 46 chemicals directly used in water treatment or used to manufacture water treatment chemicals. Each profile provides information about water treatment applications, competing uses, manufacturing methods, trade, history of supply disruptions, and an assessment of the risk of future supply disruptions.
• Understanding Water Treatment Chemical Supply Chains and the Risk of Disruptions: provides case studies of chemical supply chain disruptions that occurred between 2020 and early 2023, summarizes conditions that lead to disruptions, and presents an assessment of the risk of future supply disruptions for the forty-six chemicals covered in the profiles described above. This document also describes the methodology used to develop these profiles.

EPA will also use information from these new resources to enhance existing products, such as the Chemical Suppliers and Manufacturers Locator Tool. Individual water systems can use the information in the profiles and report as a starting point to better understand the chemical supply chains upon which they rely and evaluate their own unique supply chain risks.