HeiTech Services (United States)

The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) sponsored a project on cross-sector emergency water supply planning for the National Capital Region. COG is the regional planning and coordination for the 21 local governments surrounding the nation's capital. The project was funded through an "Urban Areas Security Initiative" (UASI) grant from the US Department of Homeland Security. The scope of this project was to develop model operational plans to address provision of alternative water supply in the event of emergency failure of the public water systems for four critical water uses: (1) potable water, (2) fire fighting, (3) hospitals, and (4) sanitation. The objective of the project was to engage representatives of various community agencies to develop specific, operational emergency response plans. Agency coordination included the water utilities, emergency management agencies, fire departments, hospitals, and others. In this initial pilot project, operational plans were developed for a sample of COG jurisdictions, with templates established for subsequent plan development in other jurisdictions.

This is based on a report Recovery Primer for Natural Disasters, which was commissioned under the Water Infrastructure Security Enhancement (WISE) initiative of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the American Water Works Association (AWWA) and the Water Environment Federation (WEF). The project was funded by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The article largely draws on the discussions from a 2008 workshop of water utility managers who had experienced and responded to natural disasters that had imperiled their facilities and operations. These disasters included hurricanes, river flooding, wildfires, and earthquakes, among others. The workshop discussions were also supplemented by online research and phone conversations with other utility personnel who generously shared their experiences. The project report is downloadable from the websites of each of the three sponsoring organizations, including specifically ASCE's at (www.asce.org/files/pdf/wise/6.pdf). Included with the report are an appendix of other articles and publications of particular relevance to utilities for natural disaster response, and which are listed at the end of this article.

The purpose of this article is to outline the criticality of water supply in sustained operations of healthcare facilities, particularly during time of community emergencies, and to advocate for enhanced cross-sector support from the water utilities in meeting this need. Information and ideas presented here were developed in the course of a regional project sponsored by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments for development of emergency water supply operations plans for critical water uses in the Washington, DC, area. See the appendix at the end of the article for a summary of the larger project.