Part 1: Collaboration & Communication – The two “C”s of Emergency Preparedness

 

Overview:

• • • • • • Learn from three cases studies in water supply and wastewater treatment related to emergency events.
          • Review how an emerging water quality issue can reduce your water supply strategy and the need to mitigate to restore capacity.
          • Consider how the failure of linear infrastructure can impact the local community and the importance of collaboration to communicate and develop a response.
          • Understand how building a diverse team has improved planning and response to emergency events.
          • Consider how innovations can help improve the planning and response to these emergency issues.

The session will consider three different emergency events that occurred in 2021 during the pandemic.  The first issue is related to a detection of chromium in a water supply, which reduced the supply capacity to the community.  The second issue resulted from a failure to a wastewater forcemain and its impact to the community.  The final issue was the failure of a water transmission main where residents lost their water supply and some, their heating, over a 24 hour period. The experience and lessons learned being shared to support our community in building better emergency plans.

Host:

Brigitte Roth
OMWA W3ETAC Executive, Acclaims Environmental Inc
Brigitte is a management systems, compliance and risk management professional with over 25 years’ experience in achieving legislative compliance, optimizing and integrating management systems, and conducting risk assessments and analysis. She has a passion for preparing and improving emergency response plans, planning and executing annual emergency test exercises and debrief sessions, and developing and delivering training related to the above areas of expertise. Brigitte is also experienced as an alternate Community Emergency Management Coordinator (CEMC) for the City of Guelph from 2015 to 2017 and as a Planning Section Chief in the City’s Emergency Operations Centre from 2014 to 2017.

Speakers:

Pam Law, P. Eng
Professional Engineer for Region of Waterloo
Pam brings a background in municipal water and wastewater engineering. Her goals include continuing to improve collaboration with both internal and external stakeholders, which will be highlighted in this presentation

 

 

Nancy Kodouesek, P. Eng
Professional Engineer for Region of Waterloo
Nancy shares her experiences in this presentation with a background in the water and wastewater industry working in both municipal and private sector. Having worked in various operational, technical and engineering roles, Nancy brings a unique perspective to this presentation.