20th Annual EPA Drinking Water Workshop: Session 7B
Resilience
Track B: Source, Treatment, and Operations
Presentation summaries and speaker and moderator biographies for Session 7B of the 20th Annual EPA Drinking Water Workshop.
September 13, 2023 from 1:45 to 3:30 p.m. ET
See the full workshop agenda for all sessions.
Moderator:
Kevin Letterly, M.S. | Association of State Drinking Water Administrators
Kevin is a senior policy analyst with ASDWA and has been with ASDWA for five years. Some of his areas of focus include AWOP, drinking water security issues, climate change, and lead testing in schools. Kevin holds an M.S. in environmental science from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and a B.S. in environmental science from the University of Illinois-Champaign.
EPA's Water Network Tool for Resilience (WNTR)
Drinking water utilities face multiple challenges, including aging infrastructure, water quality concerns, pipe breaks, uncertainty in supply and demand, natural disasters, environmental emergencies, and terrorist attacks. All of these have the potential to disrupt service to customers and damage critical infrastructure. Increasing resilience to these types of hazards is essential to improving water security. Simulation and analysis tools can help water utilities predict how their system will respond to expected, and unexpected, incidents and help inform decisions to make water distribution systems more resilient over time. The United States Environmental Protection Agency, in partnership with Sandia National Laboratories, developed the Water Network Tool for Resilience (WNTR), an open source Python package, to integrate critical aspects of resilience modeling for water distribution networks into a single software framework. WNTR can help water utilities investigate the resilience of their water systems to a wide range of hazardous scenarios and evaluate emergency response actions and long-term resilience‐enhancing strategies. The software estimates potential damages from disaster scenarios; predicts how damage to infrastructure would occur over time; evaluates preparedness strategies; prioritizes response actions; and identifies worse case scenarios, efficient repair strategies, and best practices for maintenance and operations. This presentation will provide an overview of WNTR along with a few case study applications. (WNTR)
Terra Haxton, Ph.D. | EPA Office of Research and Development
Terra is an engineer in the Center for Environmental Solutions and Emergency Response within EPA’s Office of Research and Development. Since joining EPA in 2007, she has helped develop water system modeling approaches to assist drinking water utilities in improving security and resilience to natural disasters. Terra holds a Ph.D. and an M.S. in environmental engineering and a B.S. in civil engineering from Vanderbilt University.
Tornado Response in Kentucky
On December 10, 2021, an EF-4 tornado devastated the community of Mayfield, Kentucky. The drinking water system was heavily impacted, including the collapse of a 600,000-gallon elevated finished water storage tank. Mayfield serves drinking water to a population of 10,000 people along with a hospital and a number of industries and businesses. The Kentucky Department of Environmental Protection’s Emergency Response Team, along with the Kentucky Division of Water, were called into action to assist in restoring safe drinking water service to the area. This presentation will discuss the steps taken by Mayfield Water and Electric and their partners to return service to their customers along with obstacles discovered along the way and the remarkable resiliency demonstrated by a small community.
Jackie Logsdon, B.S. | Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet
Jackie is an environmental scientist advisor with 23 years of experience working for the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet, Division of Water. She began her career as a drinking water inspector, but she has spent the majority of her tenure providing drinking water technical assistance to public water systems, while also serving as the Kentucky Area Wide Optimization Program coordinator. She now serves as the team lead for PFAS in the Drinking Water Branch. Jackie holds a B.S. in biology from the University of Kentucky.
Shannon McLeary, B.S. | Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet
Shannon is a regional office supervisor with 23 years of experience working for the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet, Department for Environmental Protection where she oversees a staff of three scientists, while also conducting inspections and providing technical assistance to facilities in her region. She is also a state on scene coordinator for the Emergency Response Team for the Department and has been the lead responder on several large incidents. Shannon holds a B.S. in environmental engineering technology from Murray State University.
Environmental Lessons Learned From Colorado’s Marshall Fire
On December 30, 2021, the Marshall Fire became the most monetarily destructive fire in Colorado’s history, while burning just over 6,000 acres. As a grassland fire in the Wildland Urban Interface, it impacted more than 40,000 people, destroyed more than 1,000 residential and commercial structures, and caused widespread damage to water sources, treatment, and distribution system infrastructure. The City of Louisville and Town of Superior were particularly impacted. Water system losses due to fire damaged properties posed an acute risk to emergency response and life safety in both distribution systems. Unconventional emergency actions were taken to preserve pressure, including introducing untreated water into the distribution system. Heroic efforts to supply fuel to a backup generator allowed one area water treatment plant to be started and bolster water for fire protection. After the fire, we supported post-fire response and recovery decisions for the city, town, and other impacted communities in the area. Active research on recent California fires and associated wildfire impacts to distribution system water quality was employed to advise utility actions. Given the absence of established procedures, we assisted in data review, government and community interactions, system isolation, sampling strategy design, and decision-making processes as the utilities navigated system stabilization, damage assessment, and return to service. The city conducted widespread monitoring and flushing of VOCs and SVOCs in burned and adjacent distribution system locations. The Town installed GAC treatment to address smoky odor complaints attributed to ash deposits in their source water reservoir.
This presentation will provide an overview of the Marshall Fire, water systems response and recovery, and share recommendations for other communities preparing for increased fire risks in the Wildland Urban Interface. Participants in this session will learn about the Marshall Fire in Colorado that caused widespread damage to water infrastructure in the City of Louisville and Town of Superior. Building on the knowledge gained from recent California fires, the City and Town experiences offer additional and improved lessons learned to share with other communities to protect public health and maintain operations.
Chad Seidel, Ph.D., P.E. | Corona Environmental Consulting, LLC
Chad is the president of Corona Environmental Consulting and a research affiliate at the University of Colorado Boulder. He has devoted his career to researching and improving how drinking water is regulated and implemented―including DBPs, arsenic, nitrate, lead, PFAS, and more. He and his team have addressed wildfire concerns for water systems across the country and recently lead the recovery response for the City of Louisville and Town of Superior following the 2021 Marshall Fire in Colorado. Chad holds a Ph.D. in environmental engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder and is a registered engineer in several states.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in these presentations are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Any mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute EPA endorsement or recommendation for use.