The Georgia Operator Publishes Freese and Nichols’ Tips for Disaster Readiness
A Freese and Nichols team led by Atlanta-based Paula Feldman published insights on meeting new requirements of the American Water Infrastructure Act of 2018 in the summer issue of The Georgia Operator, the magazine of the Georgia Association of Water Professionals.
Paula co-leads our Water/Wastewater Master Planning and Modeling team for the East Coast.
Other authors of the article were Trey Shanks, Stormwater; Scott Cole, Water/Wastewater Master Planning Group Manager; Thomas Haster, Chief Business Development Officer for water.
The Southeast United States has had its share of severe weather in recent years, including Hurricane Michael causing heavy damages in southwest Georgia in October 2018, just a month after Hurricane Florence pounded North and South Carolina.
The AWIA requires community water systems to create a framework for expanded risk and resiliency planning and preparedness. This includes being ready to handle both natural hazards and malevolent acts, such as cyberattacks.
Water systems serving populations of 3,300 or more people must prepare a Risk and Resilience Assessment (RRA) and certify it to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), then follow up with an Emergency Response Plan (ERP) six months later.
The primary goal of the RRA is to help water utilities identify and prioritize their critical assets exposure to high-likelihood hazards.
The final portion of the assessment includes a management or mitigation plan that identifies physical and operational improvements that can be programmed into future budgets and implemented based on net benefits achieved.
Our teams are helping clients understand and meet the AWIA requirements, and this article is another way of spreading the word.
Read the full Georgia Operator article on page 38: Disaster-Ready: How to Meet the New Risk and Resiliency Requirements of the American Water Infrastructure Act of 2018. The same issue features our desalination work on page 59.
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