|
|
Entries for the 'Emergency Response' Category
Steve Wilson posted on November 28, 2011 07:39
This is the 3rd post covering the communication toolbox, a new tool available from CDC on how to prepare, deal with, and learn from situations where you need to (precautionary) or have to (mandatory) communicate with your customers to advise them of a drinking water situation in your community. The 1st blog post provided an overview of the toolbox, the 2nd blog post discussed the introduction section of the toolbox, which explained some of the basics about when and why you should communicate with the public. Today, we'll provide you with some suggestions they provide for small systems.
For Small Systems Using the Toolbox
The toolbox was written for water systems, both large and small. But, it was developed with both in mind. We've already mentioned that we think the toolbox is one of the most complete tools available to help you with communicating with the public during an emergency, and on page 13, they offer some suggestions for small systems, recognizing that sometimes small systems may not have the capacity to implement all of the suggestions listed in the toolbox. Basically, these are the things every small system should do to be prepared, regardless of the emergency.
1. Identify and prioritize specific tools or sections in the toolbox to use. The toolbox is worth going through, cover to cover, to really understand what it means to communicate with your customers and to be prepared in an emergency. In doing so, you will find many great ideas that will help you prepare, act, and recover from an emergency situation. Pick and choose what you think will work for your specific situation and within the capacity of your system and community.
2. Incorporate water advisory protocol planning into regular activities, such as sanitary surveys and updating emergency response plans. I'm sure some of you think this is "beyond" what you can do, and may not even have an emergency response plan in place for your system. That is a great place to start and there are some great templates available from RCAP and Rural Water that walk you through development of a plan. Do that first, and you will understand why its important to be prepared and think ahead, rather than react to an emergency. (call or email us, we can help, as can your local TA providers. See the links to the templates below).
3. Build water advisory protocols into regular communication, such as customer updates. Again, some of you may look at this and say, I never send stuff to my customers. Why not? When operators tell me their customers want "free" water, and don't value what they do, I tell them to start marketing to their customers, help them understand what a service you provide, how important safe water is to your community. Operators can't just do the technical stuff anymore, they have to engage their communities to understand the need and importance of safe water. Along with that is the importance of dealing with emergency situations.
4. Partner with local public health and neighboring water systems. Planning for an emergency means working with others outside your community. When a real disaster happens, you need to know what to do, who you can call, who you can rely on for help. You need to ask yourself, what does your community deserve? Doing it all on your own usually ends up hurting your community when a disaster occurs. It's the responsible thing to do, and best for your system and customers. This would also be a good time to mention your state's WARN program. Look into it, consider how it might benefit your community.
Getting Started
Remember these suggestions as you go through the toolbox. Find the pieces that you think will work for you. It states that many of the actions you can consider taking, as described in the toolbox, shouldn't require outside support from consultants or others. It also says building a network of partners and organizations to work with in an emergency is the key to success. We agree.
Should you have any questions, let us know. We will gladly help you navigate through the material and find resources that you can use with your customers for both emergency response and just for marketing the value of your water system.
Below are links to some of the resources mentioned above:
Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP)
National Rural Water Association (NRWA)
Water & Wastewater Agency Response Networks (WARN)
(click on the "WARN Regions" tab to find your state WARN program)
How To Run Your System Like A Business is a series at SmallWaterSupply.org, appearing on Monday.
Steve Wilson posted on October 07, 2011 05:00
A little over a month ago, we let you know about a new tool available from CDC on how to prepare, deal with, and learn from situations where you need to (precautionary) or have to (mandatory) communicate with your customers to advise them of a drinking water situation in your community. In that blog post, we said we would provide more information about how this tool can help you. Today, we are going to cover some of the basics about when and why you should communicate with the public.
Why Send Out Advisories
You all know when its required, legally, to send out an advisory, most commonly a boil order, but there are a range of things that could result in an advisory, and more importantly, would be good business practice to do so. The thing you need to take away from this blog post is that you can use advisories for your benefit, to educate your customers and to engage them to take ownership of their water system.
Advisories are many times required, necessary, and bad news; they can also help you by helping your customers understand what is going on with your water system. The toolbox says there are 4 reasons to issue an advisory:
- to provide information,
- to encourage preparedness,
- to recommend action, and
- to meet public notification requirements.
Using Advisories For Your Benefit
Do you send out advisories to provide information? These are the advisories that don't require any customer action, but let them know that something is going on. The example the toolbox mentions (on page 10) is to let customers know about seasonal changes in taste. How many of you let customers know when you are flushing lines, or dosing chlorine, or when a large storm affects your influent water quality and taste or color? Or even when you are going to be working on a water main that might shut down a road in town? Or when you are drilling a new well? Some of you may not see the need to let your community know about all of these things, they would rather deal with the few phone calls they get. What you are missing is an opportunity to teach your community more about what you do.
Changing Public Opinion
Most of us would agree that in small towns, people tend to take their water for granted. Many pay very little for clean, safe water, but the public tends to view their water as a right, not a privilege. You, as the operator, understand this is not the case. You, as the operator, are also in the best position to change that public perception. Advisories are one way to do that. When you are drilling a new well, send out an advisory letting the community know they will be getting a new resource that will benefit them. Include the cost, why its necessary, what it will mean to the town. When chlorine is going to be an issue, send out an advisory. Let them know why its necessary, how it protects them from bacterial contamination, and offer them additional resources to learn more about it.
Be Proactive
It can't be stressed enough that the operator is the front line person for educating the public about their water system and why water costs what it does. The public needs to understand that though water itself is free, delivering clean, safe water to every home, park and building has a cost both in delivery and to maintain. You are the person who should be explaining those costs, every chance you get.
If You Need Help
If this is all new to you and you need help, let us know. We would be glad to find free materials for you to use with customers. We can also contact your local/regional technical assistance providers to get their suggestions and support of your efforts. If you really want to get serious about keeping your community in the loop, you could even start a Facebook page and post information regularly on different aspects of your system. We can help you set that up too (for free).
Jennifer Wilson posted on September 07, 2011 08:00 
By Sandra Fallon, Training Specialist, National Environmental Services Center
If a natural disaster or other incident strikes your town, local water and wastewater utilities must rely on their own resources immediately following the crisis. It can take 72 hours or longer for assistance to arrive from the state or federal government after a state of emergency is declared. Because first responders, local businesses, community and health services, and the public continue to rely on water services during and after an emergency, and because water service disruptions can make recovery efforts even more difficult, it’s prudent to plan ahead so that assistance is in place for rapid, effective response and recovery.
Public and private water and wastewater utilities, both large and small, can now participate in the Water/Wastewater Agency Response Network (WARN), a utilities-helping-utilities program that uses mutual aid and assistance agreements, which are established and signed prior to an emergency, to help affected utilities quickly obtain resources such as personnel, equipment, materials, and related services from utility signatories to the WARN agreement. In an emergency, WARN support kicks in when local resources are overwhelmed or unable to provide what's needed. WARN can be activated by any impacted signatory utility in response to an emergency, and aid can arrive quickly, saving critical response time. "Simply put, WARN helps ensure continuity of operations" says Kevin Morley, manager of the Security and Preparedness Program with the American Water Works Association (AWWA). "If a system is impaired or impacted, WARN provides an option to recover as fast as possible."
Now is the time to encourage your local water and wastewater systems to join WARN, before disaster strikes. WARN programs are underway in almost all 50 states, and those without a WARN are working on it. You can find your state WARN contact information on the National Warn Web site at www.NationalWARN.org.
Partnerships, Planning, and Mutual Aid
The network is formed through partnerships among public and private water and wastewater utilities and key representatives from professional associations, state water and wastewater regulatory and emergency management agencies, and the regional Environmental Protection Agency. This collaboration helps facilitate pre-disaster planning and training, and encourages sharing information and lessons learned from other disasters. Ongoing communication among WARN leaders and members is essential to keep the network up-to-date and ready to handle an emergency.
The heart of WARN is the mutual aid and assistance agreement, which addresses members' responsibilities, procedures and protocols for providing aid, legal and liability concerns, and issues related to crossing jurisdictional boundaries to provide emergency aid. These agreements are designed to meet National Incident Management System (NIMS) and federal requirements for homeland security grants, and such agreements must be in place prior to an incident for federal disaster assistance reimbursement. According to Morley, all communities are required to become NIMS compliant (http://www.fema.gov/emergency/nims/), and becoming a WARN signatory helps a community achieve this goal.
WARN members in each state use the same pre-established mutual aid and assistance agreement developed by that state's initial WARN leadership team. This agreement takes into account state laws and regulations, establishes a cost recovery process for utilities, and addresses expectations for reimbursement. The agreement also addresses how workers’ compensation, insurance, or damaged equipment on loan will be handled. The WARN agreements address hazards ranging from small incidents like power outages and major line breaks to large, catastrophic disasters, and facilitate assistance from across state lines if necessary.
Benefits of Joining WARN
WARN offers a practical and affordable approach with multiple benefits for the utility and community. "WARN functions like a no-cost insurance policy," says Morley. There is no cost to join the network, and in an emergency each utility decides whether it can respond on a case-by-case basis; there is no obligation. The utility may incur some planning and coordination costs such as staff time to attend meetings, conducting legal reviews, or communication efforts. Overall, the costs are small and well worth the benefits.
AWWA conducted a survey to determine the economic benefits of WARN and found that WARN participation improves a utility's ability to respond to emergencies and reduces their costs to respond. Cost savings include reduced costs to purchase and maintain back-up power capabilities, such as portable generators, and to borrow rather than purchase and store other emergency supplies and equipment. Utilities also indicate reduced loss of water and wastewater revenues due to expedited recovery of services. WARN membership can be a positive factor in risk assessments for insurance purposes, resulting in reduced insurance costs.
Encourage Local Utilities to Join WARN
No community or utility is immune to disaster, and past experience suggests that outside help can be a long time coming. WARN helps the water and wastewater sector become more self-reliant and offers rapid, specialized assistance for emergency response and recovery. Securing this help requires a utility to join its WARN program before disaster occurs. Trying to figure out who can help when your treatment plant is flooded is not good business. According to AWWA's Morley, "WARN participation should be a key part of every utility's business continuity and risk management plans. The costs are small and the benefits to the utility and the community it serves are large." By making sure that your local utilities join your state WARN, you'll be taking a positive step to protect your community, its water services, and the water utility's ability to return to normal operations as soon as possible.
This article is part of the Water We Drink series, developed by the Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP) and the National Environmental Services Center (NESC).
Steve Wilson posted on July 18, 2011 09:56
In June, we announced the kick-off of our internship pilot program. Over the next several months, we'll be documenting the progress, challenges and lessons learned in this experience.
Two Communities So Far
We have found two communities, so far, that we will be working with this summer. They will be utilizing our intern to assist them in developing tools and information that they can use to help run their systems more effectively. Each community is in a different place, and has unique issues they want help with.
Our idea, when we started this program, was to find a few communities interested in developing ERP's, asset management plans, and long range plans, and have our intern, who is a Class C water and Class D wastewater operator in Illinois, provide some of the man power necessary to develop the inventories, look up information, etc.
Every System Is Unique
Boy is this an understatement. Neither community fit the model we envisioned for this project. Community A, for lack a better name, is actually in really good shape. Their operator and village president are on the same page, they have an idea of where they want to go, they have an ERP (with help from ILRWA), and they have a little money in the bank. It's a community of only 800 people, and they are doing a great job managing their system. They actually contacted us, after seeing the article in our newsletter, and asked for specific help with asset management.
The best way to describe the situation in Community A is they are doing well and are being proactive and moving further forward. They are in a classic situation where succession planning needs to be a part of the picture - with the village president and operator on the verge of retiring in 5 years or less. They have the CUPSS software from USEPA and were a little intimidated with trying to work with it, so Nate's main job for them is going to be to get CUPSS set up for them. We are also using the new "AM Kan Work" manual from NMEFC, and plan to have Nate develop both sets of tools for each of the communities that ask for our help.
Community #2
This community was suggested to us by Illinois RCAP, and we are grateful for their help and support. Community #2 is a community that is starting from scratch. We haven't talked to them yet, our first meeting is tomorrow, but the information we do have suggests that it is a community that has had significant problems in the past, and are now stepping up with new managment and village officers to try and get a handle on their water and wastewater systems. They first need an evaluation of where their systems stand, so Nate will be conducting a Vulnerability Assessment for them. Based on those results we will move forward. Illinois RCAP is also assisting this community, and will be advising Nate as we work with the community.
Working Out Better Than We Had Hoped
The goal of the program is to expose Nate to a variety of community situations that will better prepare him for managing his own system, while providing a measureable benefit to each of the communities that participates. We are already seeing that Nate's exposure to even these two communities, is going to go along way in preparing him for his first head operator position. And for the communities, we are developing plans with Nate that will really help them move forward and meet their needs.
Note #1: We are still looking for 1-2 communities of under 1000 people within an hour of St Louis, that would be interested in participating in this program.
|