Sept. 11, 2002 -- Wastewater utilities face unique challenges in evaluating and determining approaches for reducing their vulnerability to both intentional threats and natural disasters.
The Water Environment Federation (WEF) and the Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies (AMSA), in cooperation with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), are working in partnership to provide publicly owned treatment works (POTWs) with the necessary tools to initiate vulnerability assessments and develop or update emergency response plans.
WEF's wastewater training will take a three-prong approach:
LARGE SYSTEM TRAINING:
Twelve two-day training sessions conducted around the country between October 2002 and July 2003 will focus on more than 300 of the nation's largest POTWs. The experts who designed the AMSA Vulnerability Self-Assessment Tool (VSAT wastewater) will provide hands-on training to utilities.
VSAT wastewater is designed to provide a comprehensive, intuitive system for wastewater utilities seeking to analyze their vulnerabilities and implement appropriate countermeasures.
Utility representatives with responsibility for security planning will bring data from their own plant to the training and initiate a vulnerability assessment with VSAT wastewater designed specifically for their circumstances.
Participants will then learn how to develop a vulnerability assessment and an emergency response plan for their individual utility. Confirmed registrants will receive a pre-conference information package with more details regarding the training session
that will be mailed to the address indicated on the application.
All training sessions are offered free to public utilities. Each workshop location has a limited capacity of 30 POTWs with two representatives per
facility.
TRAIN THE TRAINER:
WEF will be offering a one-day session in each of the EPA's 10 regions that will train a total of 150 individuals ("trainers") on the use and capabilities of the VSAT wastewater and the development and upgrade of emergency response plans.
These individuals will then act as resources for utilities that need future training and assistance.
WEB-CAST ("Click, Listen, and Learn"):
WEF, along with the American Public Works Association, will offer part one of a two-part web-cast ("Click, Listen, and Learn") on November 20, 2002, which will be open to all utilities. The second part of the web-cast will be given in March of 2003.
Registration for the first three Large Utility training workshops and the first two Train the Trainer workshops are now available. Registration for the web-cast is not yet available but will be in the very near future.
Please visit WEF's Web site at http://www.wef.org for more information and registration details for the wastewater security training.
