Cybersecurity has steadily risen as a priority for water infrastructure over the past few years, but operators and industry groups pled with Congress this week to fully fund existing programs and open up new subsidies to replace aging infrastructure, update digital defenses and train replacements for a rapidly aging workforce.
Representatives from the water sector testified in front of the House Homeland Security Committee Wednesday, painting a dire picture of utilities across the country with outdated equipment, systems that are increasingly a target for criminal and nation-state hackers and not nearly enough revenues or state and local funding to meaningfully address any of those problems.
That aging infrastructure has already resulted in preventable tragedies in Flint, Michigan and more recently Jackson, Mississippi, where years of neglect have created contaminated water…
