Helping the water sector strengthen resilience and meet compliance
with clarity and confidence.
NextLine Strategies was founded on a simple belief: readiness should be practical, proactive, and sustainable.
Founded by Christine Herndon, a water sector professional with more than 20 years of experience, including 17 years leading a successful environmental consulting firm, NextLine partners directly with public and private utilities across compliance, resilience, and emergency preparedness to develop solutions that align with their people, systems, and mission.
Christine’s background provides firsthand insight into the challenges organizations face: balancing compliance, operations, and limited resources while maintaining reliable service. NextLine Strategies helps bridge that gap, turning strategic goals into actionable, lasting resilience.
Because readiness doesn’t happen by accident; it’s built through focus, partnership, and clear direction.
Christine Herndon
Founder and Managing Principal
Benchmark your program against the full body of applicable federal, state, and local requirements and industry standards, including guidance from AWWA, EPA, and FEMA. We review your plans, programs, and practices, compare them against current standards and evolving guidance, and pinpoint where you can strengthen resilience and streamline operations.
You walk away with a clear, phased roadmap for continuous improvement that builds on your program’s strengths and moves you steadily toward greater compliance and resilience.
Get the full value of America’s Water Infrastructure Act. Under Section 2013 (SDWA Section 1433), we develop and update your Risk & Resilience Assessments (RRAs) and Emergency Response Plans (ERPs) to keep you compliant.
Section 2018 (EPCRA Sections 304 and 312) requires prompt spill notification when your source water is at risk and also gives you access to Tier II inventory data to mitigate it.
We help you meet both and put that data to work in your source water protection and emergency planning.
Maintain compliance with federal, state, and local requirements through practical, right sized tools, from plan updates and permit compliance to hazardous waste management and general environmental program support.
From routine reporting to more complex obligations, we help you stay ahead of deadlines and keep environmental issues from disrupting your operations. We keep compliance manageable, transparent, and built for real world operations, so your environmental responsibilities support your mission instead of pulling your team away from it.
Plans only deliver value when they stay current, and your team stays ready. We keep readiness active through training, program documentation, follow-up actions, and continual improvement tools that fit how you actually operate, along with tabletop and functional exercises to test your emergency response.
We help utilities sustain compliance and carry both into daily operations long after the plan is written, so the investment you’ve made keeps paying off year after year, not just at audit time.
An extension of your team. Seasoned expertise on call, without adding headcount. Utilities run lean, and the workload doesn’t. NextLine is the on-call resource for emergency preparedness, environmental, and regulatory questions and for staff augmentation to cover vacancies, transitions, or peak workload.
During an incident, we provide incident management support in person or virtually, in your emergency operations center or in the field.
When a specialized one-off project comes up, we can scope and oversee that too, so whatever you’re facing, the right support is only a call away.