Emergency Water Supply Planning for the National Capital Region

The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) sponsored a project on cross-sector emergency water supply planning for the National Capital Region. COG is the regional planning and coordination for the 21 local governments surrounding the nation's capital. The project was funded through an "Urban Areas Security Initiative" (UASI) grant from the US Department of Homeland Security. The scope of this project was to develop model operational plans to address provision of alternative water supply in the event of emergency failure of the public water systems for four critical water uses: (1) potable water, (2) fire fighting, (3) hospitals, and (4) sanitation. The objective of the project was to engage representatives of various community agencies to develop specific, operational emergency response plans. Agency coordination included the water utilities, emergency management agencies, fire departments, hospitals, and others. In this initial pilot project, operational plans were developed for a sample of COG jurisdictions, with templates established for subsequent plan development in other jurisdictions.