Step 10

Emergency Management

Within this stage, the WRRMP should provide a set up of protocols to manage incidents and emergencies related to the risks that have been previously identified.

According to the EPA Office of Water (USA), an Emergency Response Plan should describe the strategies, resources, plans, and procedures to prepare for and respond to an incident, natural or man-made, that threatens life, property, or the environment. For them, this applies to utility agencies, however, the knowledge is transferrible to water reuse systems (considering the Guidance from: Maffettone R., Gawlik B.M., Technical Guidance - Water Reuse Risk Management for Agricultural Irrigation Schemes in Europe, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2022, doi:10.2760/590804, JRC129596).

Part "a": Approach

You (the user) need to establish the emergency management approach that will be applied to your reuse system to face emergency situations. Use the following as a guidance.

Events or incidents

1.Identify the trigger

(can be from natural source like hurricane, earthquake, flood, extreme cold and winter storms, extreme heat OR man-made source like physical security failure, cyber-attacks, power loss, massive drought, poisoning discharge, unauthorized entrance, etc.)

Detection

2. Define the strategy for detection of events or incidents that threaten the security or resilience of your system.

These strategies can be almost no-cost like: visual identification or more sophisticated like motion sensors and video cameras or combined methods.

3. Strategy-->Timely accurate detection is needed to actually be able to act and implement a procedure as response.

Challenge

4.Identify the challenge(s) to know how to address these situations.

Examples of these challenges are access, security, supply, pumping or electrical functioning, etc.

Response procedure or mitigation

5. Define the set of actions, procedures, and equipment that can mitigate the impacts of the events.

These actions, procedures, and equipment will enable either facing the event or rapidly recover the system, increasing overall resilience.

Mitigate is commonly more cost-effective than to repair damages.

Part "b": Template

Because this approach needs to be detailed in your plan, the following template can help you organize the information that is needed for this section.

Remember to copy the template/document FIRST to customize it to your own system!

GO TO STEP 10--> TEMPLATE

Example

Other resources

You can get more examples of this approach by consulting the EPA approach (Wastewater Emergency Response Plan Template Instructions (epa.gov)) (if it suits your approach) or insert your own. Keep in mind that you must provide as many details as possible to ensure the safetiness of the system.

Note

N.B: The information provided in this section is not exhaustive or fixed and the user can adopt its own approach based on experience or other specific requirements that apply to its system.

The content of this page has been produced using guidance from:

*Maffettone R., Gawlik B.M., Technical Guidance - Water Reuse Risk Management for Agricultural Irrigation Schemes in Europe, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2022, doi:10.2760/590804, JRC129596.

*EPA Office of Water (USA, 2021). Wastewater Utility Emergency Response Plan Template and Instructions. (www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2021-08/ww-erp-template-instructions.pdf)