D.C. Water Roleplays Extensive Contamination Drill

Over two-dozen staffers from Washington D.C.’s water utility put their heads together recently on a serious question: How should they respond to signs that petroleum has contaminated the water supply?

“The scenario was purely theoretical, but the large conference room at D.C. Water’s Bryant Street Pumping Station in Northwest Washington began buzzing with questions,” TheWashington Post reported.

For D.C. Water, the contamination drill is just one strategy for crisis prep at a utility known for its forward-thinking policies. When Jonathan Reeves was hired six years ago, D.C. Water was among the first utilities to hire a full-time emergency prep manager. As Reeves put it: “We protect the water for the center of the free world. We are held to higher standards.”

The recent contamination drill when a step further than previous planning discussions. “This is the next step,” Reeves said, per the report. “You actually do something to see if it works.” The exercise represented “the most far-reaching emergency drill he said the utility has conducted to practice responding to a drinking water crisis in the nation’s capital.”

TheWashington Post got an inside look at the contamination drill, which was sponsored by the U.S. EPA.

During the scenario, Jason Hughes played the role of incident commander. He “directed the group to come up with a detailed ‘incident action plan’: Determine how and where to collect water samples, get the samples tested, draft a message to the media and notify ‘critical’ customers, such as hospitals and schools,” the report said.

Some water utilities have been slow to prioritize emergency response. “Utility industry experts say many water and sewer agencies have taken a while — it’s been 14 years since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — to expand their core missions from supplying safe water and sewage disposal to anticipating a large-scale, extended water outage, be it from a terrorist attack, a hurricane or a fuel spill,” the report said.

As domestic utilities gear up, water system security is becoming a growing priority abroad, as well. One strategy Parisian authorities used to safeguard the city after terrorist attacks in November was to boost water-supply security. “Security around the water drunk by three million Parisians [was] increased following the terror attacks on the capital,” The Independent reported.

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