Epidemic and Pandemic Planning for Water Utilities

Compared to electric utilities, water utilities have less of a need to worry about storm recovery, but the playing field is much more level when it comes to dealing with an epidemic or pandemic.  Luckily, in response to the coronavirus pandemic, the American Water Works Association (AWWA) recently published guidelines to help water utilities mitigate the impact of these disaster scenarios.

Guidelines for Mitigating the Effect of an Epidemic or Pandemic

For water utilities, the impact of either of these disease scenarios is similar.  The difference is that a pandemic is more global whereas an epidemic is more regional.  Since water utilities typically serve defined local areas, they would in most cases be equally impacted in both scenarios.

Although COVID-19 has not been found in drinking water, it might be a different story for the next virus.  Therefore, like natural disasters, handling an epidemic or pandemic should be included in the emergency response plan (ERP).  It’s critical to plan for things such as worker shortages, worker safety, shortages of chemicals, supplies and equipment, revenue loss, and impaired ability to perform routine field operations.

According to the AWWA guidelines, there are numerous considerations and measures that must be included in any water utility ERP to account for these things, including:

• Maximizing workforce availability through the use of frequent communications, the identification and safeguarding of the most critical employees, cross training, reaching out to retirees, updating work-from-home protocols, succession planning, and updating employee leave and reintegration protocols.
• Maximizing employee health and well-being by communicating and encouraging effective hygiene and infection control protocols and PPE usage, staggering shifts, dividing personnel into small pods, providing hand sanitizer in conspicuous locations, utilizing thermometers to check temperatures, establishing exposure protocols, conducting mandatory health screenings, and similar tasks.
• Maintaining regulatory compliance by regularly communicating with agencies, proactively addressing any compliance challenges with regulators, keeping on top of lab testing procedures, and identifying secondary water sampling sites.
• Maintaining business operations by designating an internal response team, regularly reviewing emergency plans and protocols to make sure they are up to date, coordinating response with other utilities and agencies, revisiting mutual aid agreements, identifying critical supplies, maintaining continuous communications with suppliers, determining the criticality of functions or projects, and increasing IT support and cybersecurity to account for an increase in the number of remote workers.
• Optimizing communications and customer perceptions by emphasizing safety, empathy, service reliability and continuity, etc.
• Managing legal issues such as employee medical record confidentiality, employee rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Family and Medical Leave Act, etc.

As you can see, that’s quite a list!  I’d recommend that you read the AWWA guidelines in their entirety, and then coordinate a thorough review of your ERP, especially if it has not been reviewed in a while.  And don’t procrastinate, because you never know if another epidemic is just around the corner.