EPA Decontamination Exercise and Security Partners Meeting Held in DC this Week
This week, EPA’s Water Security Division (WSD) held a Decontamination Tabletop Exercise and Water Security Partners Meeting in Washington, DC. Following are some highlights from each of the events.
Decontamination Tabletop Exercise: The Decontamination Tabletop Exercise (TTX) for Drinking Water and Wastewater Systems was held on September 8-9. Representatives from EPA, state drinking water programs (ASDWA and Pennsylvania), state public health and environmental labs, water utilities and utility organizations, state emergency management agencies, consultants, and others were in attendance. While this was called an exercise, it was really a review of the newly developed exercise materials for participants to walk-through a mock scenario and provide feedback to EPA for refining the development of the Decontamination TTX for EPA and others to provide training for water and wastewater systems in the future. Future EPA plans include conducting four more Decontamination TTXs in 2014-2015. For more information about EPA’s efforts to address Water Sector decontamination needs and priorities, go to: http://water.epa.gov/infrastructure/watersecurity/emerplan/decon/.
Water Security Partners Meeting: The Water Security Partners Meeting was held on September 10th. Representatives from EPA, ASDWA, water associations, and others participated in the meeting. During the meeting, EPA presenters shared information about: the challenges and lessons learned from Elk River chemical spill in West Virginia; the role of EPA Regional On-Scene Coordinators and other responders during an emergency; EPA’s decontamination strategy, resources, and training plans; and the forthcoming Source Water Collaborative Call-to-Action White Paper and EPA DWMAPS Geo-platform to promote and assist with state and water utility source water assessment and protection, and emergency planning efforts. For more information about EPA’s water security efforts in general, go to: http://water.epa.gov/infrastructure/watersecurity/.
