The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has refreshed the "About" page of its wastewater monitoring program on 18 September 2026, restating the structure of the National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS) and the data sources that feed into its public dashboards (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | CDC (.gov)).
Key takeaways
- CDC's wastewater monitoring program is formally the National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS) and covers infectious-disease tracking across the U.S. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | CDC (.gov)).
- NWSS data are drawn from three reporting streams: state/territorial and local health departments, CDC's national wastewater testing contract, and the academic partner group WastewaterSCAN (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | CDC (.gov)).
- CDC's current national wastewater testing contract is held by Verily Life Sciences, LLC, with a prior contract reporting under the "Biobot_Analytics" source label (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | CDC (.gov)).
- WastewaterSCAN is a partnership between Stanford University, Emory University, and Verily (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | CDC (.gov)).
- State/territorial data are funded through the ELC Cooperative Agreement, and communities outside municipal sewer collection are not covered by NWSS monitoring (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | CDC (.gov)).
What CDC published
According to the agency, "CDC's wastewater monitoring program, also known as the National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS), provides the public health infrastructure to monitor infectious diseases through wastewater across the country." The same page notes that "wastewater monitoring for infectious diseases can be implemented in any community that is served by municipal wastewater collection systems" (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | CDC (.gov)).
Data displayed on the CDC site come from three streams, each tagged in the datasets with its own source label. State and territorial health departments are listed under "State_Territory" and are funded through the "Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for the Prevention and Control of Emerging Infectious Diseases (ELC) Cooperative Agreement," according to the page. CDC's current national testing contract is held by Verily Life Sciences, LLC, and is labelled "CDC_Verily," while data from a previous contract are reported as "Biobot_Analytics." The academic stream is WastewaterSCAN, described on the page as "a partnership between Stanford University, Emory University, and Verily" (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | CDC (.gov)).
The page also flags that "some state/territorial and local health departments also display wastewater data on their websites," and that "differences between the data on their websites and the CDC website represent differing levels of data reporting" as well as different visualisation approaches. CDC directs members of the public to contact their state, territorial or local health department for community-level details (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | CDC (.gov)).
No figures on flow, population covered, sample volume, turnaround time or number of participating utilities were published on the page reviewed (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | CDC (.gov)).
Specification read
The 18 September 2026 update is a documentation change rather than a procurement or capacity event, so no flow figure is reported. The page does not state volumes in million gallons per day or population equivalents, and it does not name individual plants; instead it describes a national surveillance layer sitting above municipal wastewater collection systems. Because no flow, BOD, COD or population-equivalent figure is given, the operating envelope of the network can only be characterised qualitatively. For reference, a U.S. mid-size municipal WWTP typically handles on the order of 10,000–100,000 m³/day (about 2.6–26 MGD) serving tens of thousands to a few hundred thousand residents, while a large utility can run into the hundreds of thousands of m³/day (general industry range, not from the sources). Any plant that ties into a public sewer — and therefore sits within NWSS's "community served by municipal wastewater collection systems" scope — is a potential data source for the dashboard (general industry range, not from the sources).
NWSS touches the upstream end of the treatment train rather than a single process unit. Surveillance relies on influent sampling at the head of the works, before screening and grit removal would alter the signal, and before primary, biological (A2O, MBR, MBBR, SBR, UASB) or tertiary/disinfection stages are applied. The data value comes from the influent composite, not from a downstream unit operation. For utility engineers and procurement leads running plants that already meter and composite influent, this matters because the existing sampling point — typically the inlet works — is the asset the public-health programme depends on. Operators whose plants are already instrumented for online influent monitoring are the closest fit to what NWSS expects; operators whose plants lack composite samplers or reliable flow-paced collection are the obvious upgrade candidates (general industry range, not from the sources).
Procurement leads tracking where CDC's testing spend flows should note that the current national wastewater testing contract sits with Verily Life Sciences, LLC, and that WastewaterSCAN brings in Stanford University and Emory University as academic partners (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | CDC (.gov)). Engineers evaluating new builds or retrofits against a similar monitoring scope can compare notes against typical Municipal treatment configurations, and the relative weighting of MBR versus conventional activated sludge for plants that may need to expose clean secondary effluent to additional instrumentation is covered in our 2026 comparison piece on MBR vs Conventional Activated Sludge for Food & Beverage Wastewater in Kindred, US (2026 Guide). Where a plant is being designed or refurbished against a defined effluent envelope, the framework in our Effluent Treatment Plant in Newcastle: 2026 Engineering Buyer's Guide applies the same influent-to-discharge logic to a UK context.
FAQ
What exactly is the National Wastewater Surveillance System?
It is the formal name of CDC's wastewater monitoring programme and, according to the agency's own page, "provides the public health infrastructure to monitor infectious diseases through wastewater across the country." It pulls data from state and local health departments, a national testing contractor, and an academic partner (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | CDC (.gov)).
Which companies or universities are feeding data into the CDC dashboard today?
The page names Verily Life Sciences, LLC as the current holder of CDC's national wastewater testing contract, with prior contract data reported under the "Biobot_Analytics" label, and the academic stream handled by WastewaterSCAN, "a partnership between Stanford University, Emory University, and Verily" (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | CDC (.gov)).
If our municipal plant is in a small community, can we still participate in NWSS?
According to CDC, "wastewater monitoring for infectious diseases can be implemented in any community that is served by municipal wastewater collection systems," so the gate is sewer connection rather than plant size. CDC directs enquiries to the relevant state, territorial or local health department (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | CDC (.gov)).
What does the 18 September 2026 page change mean for our instrumentation budget?
The page itself is a documentation update and does not announce new flow figures, contract values or instrumentation specs. General industry range for a basic composite-sampler retrofit at a small-to-mid municipal plant is typically a few thousand to low-tens-of-thousands of dollars per site, with lead times of weeks rather than months (general industry range, not from the sources).
