WSSC Skipped Required Drug-and-Alcohol Checks on About 300 Drivers From 2020 to 2026, Audit Found

WSSC Water did not run federally required drug-and-alcohol database checks on about 300 of its drivers who hold commercial driver’s licenses from January 2020 through March 2026, according to an audit by the utility’s Office of the Inspector General.

The audit is dated June 11, 2026, and WSSC posted it in June. The audit’s findings are now summarized in the inspector general’s Fiscal Year 2026 annual report, which WSSC posted this month to its inspector general reports page. The annual report lists all seven of the audit’s findings as “Open” and “In Progress” as of June 30, 2026.

WSSC staff gave the utility’s commissioners an update on the audit at their Oct. 21, 2026 meeting. In the status report, Performance and Accountability Director Helen Hagos listed the April 23, 2026 annual queries as done, with “14 licenses downgraded,” and listed Dec. 31, 2026 as the date for formalizing the written Clearinghouse procedures.

WSSC Water serves about 1.9 million customers in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties.

The missed drug-and-alcohol checks

Since Jan. 6, 2020, the effective date cited in the audit, federal rule 49 CFR 382.701 has required employers of commercial driver’s license (CDL) holders to query the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse before a driver starts safety-sensitive work, and at least once a year after that. The Clearinghouse records drug and alcohol program violations, including verified positive drug tests, alcohol tests at or above 0.04 and test refusals. Many federal trucking rules exempt state and local government transportation under 49 CFR 390.3T(f), but 49 CFR 382.103 says those exceptions do not apply to the drug-and-alcohol testing rules.

The audit found that WSSC’s Occupational Health & Safety Office “did not conduct required Clearinghouse queries for approximately 300 CDL drivers from the effective date of mandatory compliance, January 6, 2020, through March 31, 2026.” The audit says neither the pre-employment queries nor the annual queries were done.

The WSSC audit states that “the failure to perform the required queries renders a driver unqualified under federal law.” The audit also says the lapse exposes WSSC to federal civil penalties under 49 U.S.C. 521(b). The inspector general rated the finding “HIGH” risk.

According to the audit, the safety office’s managers attributed the gap to “competing priorities, resource constraints, and periods of organizational change.”

14 drivers downgraded after April checks

WSSC’s safety office ran the overdue annual Clearinghouse queries on April 23, 2026, after notifying all CDL drivers by email on April 20, according to management’s response in the audit. WSSC’s response says 14 drivers “have had their licenses downgraded accordingly through the OHS Driver’s Licensing Application,” the safety office’s internal licensing system.

WSSC’s response groups the 14 drivers together as drivers who “did not provide consent, had a drug or alcohol violation, or whose current job descriptions no longer require CDL operation.” The audit does not say how many of the 14 fall into each of those three groups.

Lapsed medical certificates and operator certifications

In a sample of 121 WSSC employees required to hold a CDL with a valid medical examiner’s certificate, the audit found “18 instances where CDL drivers did not maintain compliance with CDL and/or MEC requirements.” Some drivers in that sample had their CDLs downgraded because their medical certificates expired, and the audit says WSSC relied mainly on employees to report their own expirations.

Maryland requires people who operate water and wastewater systems to be certified by the state’s Board of Waterworks and Waste Systems Operators under COMAR 26.06.01. In samples of 45 Production Department employees and 58 Utility Services Department employees, the audit found five whose operator certification status was not kept active or could not be verified. The five cases included expired certifications, late or incomplete renewal applications and cases where records were not available to confirm continuous certification. The audit says that “in each instance, employees continued performing duties requiring operator certification during periods when certification status was inactive, expired or otherwise unverified.”

WSSC management agreed with the operator finding but added context for two cases. Management wrote that one of the two Production Department cases was delayed by coordination with the Maryland Department of the Environment, and that in the other, WSSC submitted the renewal on time and MDE later issued the certification.

The WSSC audit does not describe any crash, injury or water-quality problem connected to the lapses.

What WSSC says it has done

WSSC management agreed with all seven of the inspector general’s recommendations. The safety office wrote that it had “independently identified gaps within the CDL program” before the audit began, trained all CDL drivers on Clearinghouse rules between Aug. 12 and Nov. 3, 2025, and registered “nearly all the 300 CDL drivers” in the Clearinghouse.

A new WSSC driver licensing system went live Jan. 7, 2026, and sends automatic notices before drivers’ medical certificates expire, according to management’s response.

The audit lists these deadlines for WSSC’s other corrective actions:

• Written Clearinghouse, driver file and medical certificate procedures: Dec. 31, 2026.
• Human Resources procedures for checking job descriptions and verifying licenses at hire, promotion and transfer: Oct. 31, 2026.
• A WSSC-wide license tracking system with expiration alerts in Oracle: Nov. 30, 2026.
• A standardized operator certification tracking process: Dec. 31, 2026, with a new learning management system by June 30, 2027 and full certification tracking by Dec. 31, 2027.
• An Engineering and Construction Department license tracking procedure: July 31, 2026. WSSC’s Oct. 21 status report says this procedure was completed in July 2026.

The audit also found that driver qualification files for its sample of 121 CDL drivers, files the audit says federal rules require, were incomplete. WSSC’s safety office said it will not rebuild full historical files for current drivers, writing that doing so “is not operationally feasible, given that many drivers have tenures spanning decades with the agency.” The office said it will apply the full file requirements to new drivers and will carry out ongoing checks for current drivers, including annual reviews of their driving records.

Still unanswered

• How many of the 14 downgraded drivers had a drug or alcohol violation, how many declined consent, and how many no longer need a CDL?
• Did the April 2026 queries find a drug or alcohol violation for any driver who had been driving WSSC commercial vehicles since 2020?
• Has WSSC reported the missed queries to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, or has the agency contacted WSSC?
• Will the Human Resources procedures be finished by their Oct. 31 deadline?
• Which facilities did the five employees with lapsed or unverified operator certifications work at, and do all five now hold active certifications?

We have not yet put these questions to WSSC Water; this story will be updated with any response.

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