Drought Readiness

IS YOUR UTILITY READY FOR A DROUGHT?

Continuously hot and dry weather brings rising demands for water and declining water supplies.  Now is the time to get ready for a drought.  As the old saying goes -- don't wait for a fire to build a fire station.  Plan before the crisis hits.  Here are some suggestions for developing and carrying out a drought management plan.

KNOW YOUR SYSTEM
             --What are your system constraints? What type of peak summer
                  demands do you expect?
                -- What are your treatment capacity and maximum expected supply
                   changes?
                 --Who uses what quantity of water, when, and how?
                 --Check last year's water use for golf courses, schools, and hotels
                   to project demands from 
                   high water use customers.
                 --Identify potential regional supplier interconnections, even though
                   you may not be hooked 
                   up to them.  

FIND ALTERNATE SOURCES
If you have access to a large system with a stable supply, arrange to use that source in case of an emergency.  Identify other sources such as:

                 --Shut-in wells
                 --Interconnections with utilities with excess capacity
                 --Small streams, ponds, and reuse water for non-potable
                   uses such as irrigation only.

ASSESS THE IMPACTS
What are the results of the actions that you may take?  The first stage of most drought plans usually includes voluntary cutbacks.  Make sure all stages of your drought plan are complete, including all mandatory cutbacks, before you have to carry out the plan.  Remember to thank health and safety first!  

INVOLVE THE PUBLIC
The first step is to make your citizens or customers part of the process.  Give them the correct information

           KEEP IT HONEST, KEEP IT SIMPLE, AND KEEP IT CONSISTENT

                 --Be ready for the media.  Describe who will be our contact with the
                   media and make sure he or she has the latest information.
                   Respond to the media inquiries as soon as possible.
                 --Make sure your employees know how to direct inquiries to the
                   media contact. 

DESIGN THE PROGRAM AND PUT IT ON PAPER

                   --List trigger conditions
                   --Define measures
                   --Assign responsibility within the city or utility
                   --Give authority to carry out certain measures without the need for
                     emergency board or council meetings.
                   --Rank measures in order of severity to correspond to the level of
                     the situation.  

ENACT ORDINANCES
Have the necessary ordinances or bylaws in place so you can levy fines, stop service or enforce penalties and special rates for high use during a declared emergency.  

Source:  Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality, July 1998

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WATER EMERGENCY PROCEDURES

The following measures should be taken in the event of water outage:

1. Fix it immediately and let users in the area know so that they can take precautions to minimize cross-connections and other hazards.
    

2. If it appears that the outage or shortage will not be short-lived, the Mayor or Chairman of the Board should contact the County Civil Defense Director to initiate the process of acquiring water tankers for potable water.  The system operator should insure a safe chlorine residual in the tankers before distributing the water to citizens.  The water system may want to have some bottled water available until water trailers are on-site.
    

3. The system should implement rationing.  The rationing notice should be posted at prominent locations such as City Hall, water office, post office, and grocery stores.  A notice should also be published through newspapers and the electronic media.  Non-essential businesses such as carwashes and laundries should be curtailed.  Outside uses of water such as watering lawns and filling of swimming pools should be prohibited.  It should be recommended that major inside uses such as clothes washing be postponed until service is restored.
    

4. If there have been lines with no water or negative pressures, a precautionary boil order should be issued by the water system until line tests on two consecutive days show the lines to be save.  Chlorine residuals should be increased.
    

5. The water system may have to valve off portions of the distribution system until towers are refilled.  Valved off areas have the potential for external contamination to enter the system through leaking joints or cracked pipe.  Before placing a valved off area back in service, the system should issue a precautionary boil order, increase the chlorine residual throughout the system and obtain safe bacteriological samples from representative areas of the system on two consecutive days.  The precautionary boil order may be lifted once the required safe samples are obtained.
    

6. The system should be repressurized slowly to avoid water hammer and the potential for futher damage to the lines.
    

7. Air should be bled from lines  as they refill since entrapped air can impede flows and may cause further line damage.
    

Source:  Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality, July 1998

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ALTERNATE WATER SOURCES FOR PWS EMERGENCIES

The following steps are offered to provide guidance when evaluating temporary alternate water wources for emergency use (drought, flood, etc.).  An emergency condition exists when the loss of supply will result in normal operating conditions less than 25 psi throughout the distribution system.  Evaluations by the Water Quality Division of the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) will only be considered when the utility has initiated a water conservation plan.

Inventory and identif temporary emergency water sources.  These can include:

1. Emergency interconnections with adjacent Public Water System.
   
   All temporary piping must be acceptable to the DEQ.  However, normal installation requirements can be waived for temporary use.

2. Reactivation of the Public Water Supplier's unused wells.
   
   Disinfection and microbiological sampling procedures shall be completed which include:
   
        **A free chloriine residual of at least 50 mg/l introduced into the well casing and allowed to stand for at
           least twelve (12) hours.
   
        **Well shall be pumped to waste until no free chlorine residual is detected.
   
        **Two successive daily raw water samples free of coliform organisms shall be collected.
   
   Wells can be approved for temporary-emergency use without all standard appurtenances (required slab, sampling tap, casing 18" above slab, well meter, etc.)

3. Temporary connection to Non-public Water System wells (domestic, irrigation, industrial).

4. Activate alternate raw water sources for surface water treatment.
   
   Evaluate potential hazardous contamination sources
   
   Evaluate temporary intake location.
   
   The DEQ uses the following order of preference for approval of water sources:
        (1)  Meets Drinking Water Standards.
        (2)  Meets all primary standards with secondary violations.
        (3)  Has primary violations (additional notification and provision of bottled water may be required).

Water quality sampling and acceptance will be coordinated by the Public Water Supply District Engineer in the Water Quality Division.  They can be contacted by phone at (405) 702-8100.

Source:  Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality, July 1998

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