Municipal Water Leader Special Issue

Page 1

Special Issue

June 2020

COVID-19 SPECIAL ISSUE


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CONTENTS JUNE 2020 COVID-19 SPECIAL ISSUE

Special Issue

Municipal Water Leader is published 10 times a year with combined issues for May/June and November/December by

an American company established in 2009.

STAFF: Kris Polly, Editor-in-Chief Joshua Dill, Managing Editor Tyler Young, Writer Stephanie Biddle, Graphic Designer Breck Bivins, Media Intern Abbey Lloyd, Media Intern Christian Martinez, Media Intern Abigail Overturf, Media Intern Ethan Prall-Freedman, Media Intern Milo Schmitt, Media Intern SUBMISSIONS: Municipal Water Leader welcomes manuscript, photography, and art submissions. However, the right to edit or deny publishing submissions is reserved. Submissions are returned only upon request. For more information, please contact our office at (202) 698-0690 or municipal.water.leader@waterstrategies.com.

5 T he Municipal Water Industry Faces Up to COVID-19 By Kris Polly

COVID-19 SPECIAL ISSUE

16 How Maryland’s State Environmental Agency Is Coping With the Coronavirus

6 C HIP Students Provide Assistance

22 Pandemic Response at the Nation’s Largest Water Wholesaler

8 How Desert Water Agency Is Keeping Its Employees and Customers Safe

28 Water Industry Employers' Responsibilities During COVID-19

12 Ensuring Water Safety in the Inland Empire By Roxanne Rountree and Kevin Pearson

ADVERTISING: Municipal Water Leader accepts half-page and full-page ads. For more information on rates and placement, please contact Kris Polly at (703) 517-3962 or municipal.water.leader@waterstrategies.com.

32 Operating a River Authority During the Pandemic 38 D elivering Drinking, Industrial, and Irrigation Water During the Pandemic

CIRCULATION: Municipal Water Leader is distributed to irrigation district managers and boards of directors in the 17 western states, Bureau of Reclamation officials, members of Congress and committee staff, and advertising sponsors. For address corrections or additions, or if you would prefer to receive Municipal Water Leader in electronic form, please contact our managing editor, Joshua Dill, at joshua.dill@waterstrategies.com. Copyright © 2019 Water Strategies LLC. Municipal Water Leader relies on the excellent contributions of a variety of natural resources professionals who provide content for the magazine. However, the views and opinions expressed by these contributors are solely those of the original contributor and do not necessarily represent or reflect the policies or positions of Municipal Water Leader magazine, its editors, or Water Strategies LLC. The acceptance and use of advertisements in Municipal Water Leader do not constitute a representation or warranty by Water Strategies LLC or Municipal Water Leader magazine regarding the products, services, claims, or companies advertised.

MunicipalWaterLeader.com

Do you have a story idea for an upcoming issue? Contact our editor-in-chief, Kris Polly, at kris.polly@waterstrategies.com.

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The Municipal Water Industry Faces Up to COVID-19 By Kris Polly

T

he COVID-19 pandemic that hit the United States in mid-March has disrupted countless aspects of daily life. Across the nation, many of us have been working from home; some people have lost their jobs or been furloughed; and all of us are wondering if and when things will go back to normal. Water, of course, is essential for life; and water treatment and delivery is an absolutely essential service. Municipal water and wastewater service providers do not have the luxury of temporarily closing up shop. Their work must continue. How exactly are they pushing forward with their operations amid the turbulence caused by the pandemic? That is what this special issue of Municipal Water Leader seeks to answer. We speak with the managers of water providers and water industry businesses across the nation to see how they are continuing services in a safe and reliable

manner by implementing new technology, engaging in common-sense alternate procedures, communicating with their customers, and cooperating with other agencies. I hope that reading about the innovative changes these professionals have made in their operations will inspire you and provide you with new ideas about how to keep your business running amid the COVID-19 pandemic and what changes you may want to make or retain once the postpandemic new normal sets in. M Kris Polly is the editor-in-chief of Municipal Water Leader magazine and the president and CEO of Water Strategies LLC, a government relations firm he began in February 2009 for the purpose of representing and guiding water, power, and agricultural entities in their dealings with Congress, the Bureau of Reclamation, and other federal government agencies. He may be contacted at kris.polly@waterstrategies.com.

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With increased health protection concerns, should you wish to receive Municipal Water Leader magazine electronically only, please e-mail Managing Editor Joshua Dill at joshua.dill@waterstrategies.com. Past issues of Municipal Water Leader are archived at municipalwaterleader.com. @MuniWaterLeader municipalwaterleader.com

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JUNE 2020 COVID-19 SPECIAL ISSUE | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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CHIP Students Provide Assistance

T

he Capitol Hill Internship Program (CHIP) was established in 2000 by Nebraska Wesleyan University (NWU) after discussions between then NWU professor Dr. Robert Oberst and his former student and NWU alum, Kris Polly, about the need for a Washington, DC–based internship experience that provided housing and limited classes. Nine U.S. universities now participate in the program, which is run by the United Methodist College Washington Consortium and has been directed by Dr. Doug Steinel since its beginning. Students in the program participate in an internship and take two classes. Program tuition is the same as the tuition students pay at their home schools. Participants live in the CHIP house, which is less than 10 minutes from Union Station and the Capitol building, and have the opportunity to visit museums and historical buildings in DC and to visit New York, Philadelphia, and other cities. The CHIP program allows students to get a head start in their professional lives, gives them strong professional connections, and helps them determine what they want to do in the future. For several semesters, Water Strategies has taught and hosted the CHIP Washington and Lobbying class. Many members of the National Water Resources Association and other Water Strategies clients have shared their time as guest speakers for the class. When the COVID‑19 pandemic caused the CHIP students to be sent home in March, the class continued online. Many of the students were also able to continue their internships remotely. When asked if they would be interested in working on special COVID‑19 issues of our magazines, all our students were eager to be of assistance. This issue represents many hours of their labor in transcribing interviews and conducting additional limited research projects. Below are the biographies of the Washington and Lobbying class students who worked to create this issue for you. (Editor’s note: Each of these students is a

future great employee. Please keep them in mind if you have positions to fill. Water Strategies highly recommends them all for your consideration.)

Abbey Lloyd

James “Breck” Bivins

I am a junior at Pfeiffer University in Misenheimer, North Carolina, where I am majoring in history and minoring in art. After graduating from Pfeiffer, I plan to attend graduate school at North Carolina State University and eventually pursue a career in Raleigh with either the state history museum or archives. While in Washington, I worked for the National Park Service as a volunteer at the Lock Keeper’s House and the National World War II Memorial on the National Mall. The effect that COVID‑19 had on Washington was instantly noticeable, as the usually busy National Mall became nearly deserted overnight and the internship program was terminated for the semester. I was unable to continue my internship from home in Asheboro, North Carolina, so my internship program coordinator at Pfeiffer created an online course to allow me to make up the credits. A lot of gratitude is owed to Dr. Steinel, who oversaw our program, coordinated our seminars, and introduced us to the wonders of life in Washington. By transcribing interview recordings with people involved in irrigation from across the country for the COVID‑19 issue of Irrigation Leader, my classmates and I helped to bring greater awareness to the challenges faced by irrigation districts and companies and how those challenges are being dealt with.

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I am an environmental studies major from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. I graduated this semester and will be starting a job with Capital 4‑H as an instructor for its natural resources program in the fall. I spent my last semester of undergrad in DC as a media and legislation intern for Water Strategies as part of the CHIP program. Being in DC was amazing, I was able to see the legislative process firsthand and spend my weekends roaming museums and eating new foods. I was also able to learn about the history of DC directly from Dr. Steinel, who made great efforts to make sure our time in DC was spent well. Sadly, I had to go home as the COVID‑19 pandemic became more serious, but I was able to continue my internship at my home in New Braunfels, Texas. While at home, I have spent time preparing for my job in Austin and assisting Water Strategies with the COVID‑19 issue of Irrigation Leader. Christian Martinez

municipalwaterleader.com


ADVERTISEMENT I am a rising political science senior at NWU. This past semester, I interned at the Bread for the World Institute, which provides nonpartisan policy analysis on hunger and strategies to end it. During my time at the institute, I had the opportunity to grow as a professional and as a student through different research experiences, writing blogs, events on the Hill and around DC, and the typical office culture of meetings and working with others. As I move forward into my career, I am looking into pursuing a masters of public health or masters of public policy and a PhD. I also know I have the option of going into the field before graduate school.

much that I have extended it through the summer! I moved back to my parents’ house in Longmont, Colorado, in midMarch and have been interning from home since then. In supporting Water Strategies on this special COVID‑19 edition of Irrigation Leader, I had the opportunity to listen to and transcribe several interviews with professionals in the water and irrigation fields about how their organizations were impacted by the virus. It will be interesting to see how organizations recover and restructure in the coming months. Ethan Prall-Freedman

Abigail Overturf

I just completed my junior year at NWU, where I major in political science and minor in music and German. In fall 2019, I studied abroad at the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom, and I spent this past semester in Washington. Needless to say, I am excited to go back to Lincoln for my last year of college. After graduation, I hope to participate in a justice fellowship at the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. CHIP was one of the main reasons I chose to attend NWU. I was extremely fortunate to live with an incredible group of fellow CHIP students and have Dr. Steinel as the CHIP director. I also joined a church choir while I was in DC! I spent the semester interning with the National League of Cities’ Center for City Solutions, assisting with the annual State of the Cities report, which will be published soon. I loved the internship so municipalwaterleader.com

I currently attend Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and am set to graduate in 2021. I am a political science major and a history minor and plan on trying to get another job on Capitol Hill after I graduate. During my brief time in CHIP, I interned for the office of Representative Kevin McCarthy. Working in the office was an amazing experience, as I got to see and participate in the inner workings of our government and meet some interesting people. I really enjoyed the program and working with its director, Dr. Steinel. We were able to do a lot of fun things and see a lot of the major city sights. Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances, the program ended earlier than expected, and I was forced to leave DC early and go back home to Los Angeles. I thank my class teacher, Kris Polly, for giving me the opportunity to work on Water Strategies’ magazines, which provided me with insight on how different companies and districts have been affected by the COVID‑19 pandemic.

Milo Schmitt

I’m a student at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and a part of the class of 2021. I’m double majoring in political science and creative writing. I plan to attend law school in DC after graduating and aim to practice law one day. While I was a part of CHIP program in DC, I interned as a media and legislative intern for Water Strategies. Before COVID‑19, DC was a city unlike any other I had visited, with opportunities everywhere. The city was active with workers; people were seen exercising around the Capitol; and with all the museums and sights, the city was busy with tourists. When COVID‑19 appeared, all the places and events that made DC so active and accessible were closed. Inevitably, I was sent home, but I was able to continue my internship from home in Wichita, Kansas. To gain insight into how irrigation districts and other companies were affected by COVID‑19, Water Strategies created a special magazine issue. My fellow classmates and I worked through interviews with irrigation industry professionals to help bring awareness to their situation. From locations spanning the United States, we coordinated our work on the interviews and helped publish the COVID‑19 issue of Irrigation Leader. For more information about the CHIP program, visit www.umcwchip.org. M

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How Desert Water Agency Is Keeping Its Employees and Customers Safe

DWA employees in the field wearing personal protective equipment

D

esert Water Agency (DWA) provides water services to about 90,000 people in Palm Springs, California. As an essential service provider, DWA has had to find creative ways to continue its services during the COVID‑19 pandemic. In this interview, DWA Manager Mark Krause tells Municipal Water Leader about the changes the agency has had to make to overcome the disruptions of the pandemic. Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background.

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Municipal Water Leader: How has the COVID‑19 pandemic affected your operations? Mark Krause: It came as a huge surprise, but we reacted quickly. We immediately started to socially distance by changing our work schedule. Almost everyone transferred to telecommuting, so we had to get a lot of electronics and laptops. Our field crews typically don’t work in the office, so telecommuting is not an easy fit for their jobs. We had them come in every other day and to do training on the days they stayed home. We also postponed a lot of work that is not essential to keeping the water system moving, especially tasks that required us to get closer than 6 feet together. We made some changes in the way our field crews work; they maintain social distance out in the field unless it’s absolutely necessary not to. Municipal Water Leader: Are there any other things that you’re doing to keep your customers and employees safe? municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF DWA.

Mark Krause: I am the general manager for DWA. I graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 1986 with a bachelor’s in engineering and went to work for Krieger & Stewart in Riverside. I did lots of projects in the water world, including surveying and inspection. I became familiar with many agencies and the different ways they do things. DWA was one of the best of our clients. They did things right. About 9 years into my career at Krieger & Stewart, in 1995, DWA offered me a job, and I decided to make a change. That was 25 years ago. I established an engineering department and a planning department at DWA; we now do a lot of our own design. I worked my way up through operations to become the supervisor of engineering

operations, then assistant general manager, and finally general manager. I’ve been DWA’s general manager for about 5 years now.


ADVERTISEMENT Mark Krause: Right away, we tried to get as much hand sanitizer, wipes, and cleaning materials as we could get to keep the office clean. We had a hard time finding it. Our cleaning crew let us know that they could send in a special crew to sanitize everything, so we have them coming in every night in addition to the normal cleaning crew. They sanitize everything: all the desktops, computers, keyboards, and telephones; the coffee room; the copy machine; and anything else you might touch. We require our employees to wear face coverings in the office, and we staggered our start times. We also closed our lobby to outside visitors before the governor had even put any restrictions in place. To make things easier for our customers, we decided to expand their payment options and eliminated late fees. We also adopted a policy that no one would get shut off through at least July 15. We’ll probably extend that. We have our phones forwarded to us at home so that customers can reach the agency even if employees are working remotely.

Mark Krause: We’re looking at both options. Nobody really knows how many telecommuting days they’re going to need. I would leave it up to the supervisor to assess the situation and approve the use of a telecommuting day. As long as the employee is working, that’s fine with me.

Municipal Water Leader: What is the most innovative thing that you’ve done to maintain your workflow?

Mark Krause at the DWA headquarters.

Mark Krause: I don’t know that we’re doing anything that other people aren’t doing. Our board of directors got out ahead of this problem and acted more quickly than a lot of organizations in the state. That made a really big difference. Social distancing and telecommuting were innovations for us because they were brand new. I don’t know a lot of organizations that are disinfecting the office every night, but I think that’s a huge thing because people are afraid to go to work when they don’t think the office is clean. Municipal Water Leader: Is that a huge expense? Mark Krause: It costs $300 a night. Municipal Water Leader: Do you expect any of the changes you have made to be retained after the pandemic is over? Mark Krause: Telecommuting is something we didn’t know we could do. We never thought about it; it wasn’t necessary. Now we know that a lot of our staff can work from home. That opens up some alternatives for us going forward. When people are feeling a little sick, they often would rather come to work than take a sick day, for instance. Maybe we’ll institute the option for employees who don’t feel 100 percent but can still get their work done to take a telecommuting day so that they don’t spread an illness. That could also be helpful for people who need to take care of other issues. We’re talking about opening that window of options.

Municipal Water Leader: Do you have any advice or suggestions for other agencies?

Mark Krause: The thing that I struggled with when the pandemic began is that water agencies are conservative by nature and avoid making decisions without lots of deliberation. They think about their communities and the sorts of secondary effects their decisions can have. That’s why having a plan is a great thing. You don’t want to have to make a bunch of decisions really quickly—that’s not what water agencies do. In this case, there was no time to delay. We had to act quickly. We relied on collaboration and a common-sense approach. If something doesn’t feel right, don’t do it. Talk to everybody, because that’s how you get the input you need and avoid unintended consequences. Overcommunicate with your staff. Supervisors often don’t want to mention things they’re not sure about. I encourage them not to be afraid. If you have an idea or a concern, put it out there and talk about it. It could be really important. You can’t do enough communicating. That one extra thing you do for safety might be the thing that keeps everybody safe, so don’t be afraid to do it. Now we’re dealing with the fatigue of this whole thing. The next challenge is to know if we have to continue to do this. How do we keep morale up? How do we keep the standard as high as it needs to be? It’s getting hard—the situation has been going on for a long time. M Mark Krause is the general manager of the Desert Water Agency. He can be reached at (760) 323‑4971.

Municipal Water Leader: Would each individual have a bank of telecommuting days, or would they be allowed to take telecommuting days on a case-by-case basis? municipalwaterleader.com

JUNE 2020 COVID-19 SPECIAL ISSUE | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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Ensuring Water Safety in the Inland Empire By Roxanne Rountree and Kevin Pearson

This billboard forms part of the partner agencies’ messaging campaign.

A

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a strong social media push using the handle hashtag #KeepItFlowingIE, with IE being a reference to the Inland Empire moniker for the region in which the six agencies lie. Many of the partnering agencies have teamed up on previous campaigns, including ones relating to water quality, the value of tap water, and promoting healthy sewers, or on outreach efforts related to critical legislative or infrastructure efforts. “Our agencies have worked and will continue to work closely together to educate our customers,” said WMWD General Manager Craig Miller. “Our voice becomes stronger when we work collectively to educate all who live and work within our communities.” When fears relating to COVID‑19 first spread among the public in early March, stores quickly sold out of bottled water and toilet paper. News accounts showed long lines for those items, empty shelves, and limits on how many units of each could be purchased. In fact, there was no need to stock up on bottled water. “Our water supplies are plentiful, reliable, and safe and do not require standing in line at big box stores,” said RCWD General Manager Jeff Armstrong. “We are here and available day and night for a fraction of the cost of bottled water.” The World Health Organization has found no link between COVID‑19 and water supplies. All public water agencies in the United States are required to use treatment processes that remove viruses municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE WESTERN RIVERSIDE FAMILY OF WATER AGENCIES.

coalition of six Riverside County, California, water agencies have come together to promote their role as essential service providers during the ongoing public health crisis caused by COVID‑19. Eastern Municipal Water District (EMWD), Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District (EVMWD), Jurupa Community Services District ( JCSD), Rancho California Water District (RCWD), Riverside Public Utilities (RPU), and Western Municipal Water District (WMWD) have partnered on a campaign to reassure customers that their tap water is both safe and reliable. The campaign was launched in late April amid ongoing state and county restrictions that were put in place to protect public health. This partnered effort—which includes both water and wastewater messaging—is helping to emphasize the safety and reliability of drinking water supplies and point out how customers can play a part in protecting their sewer systems during these unprecedented times. “We want to reassure our customers that protecting public health is at the forefront of our mission every day,” EMWD General Manager Paul Jones said. “We are proud to continue providing the same levels of essential water and wastewater services that our customers have counted on for generations.” The regional campaign will feature 11 billboards placed throughout Riverside County and will also involve


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PHOTOS COURTESY OF SCOTTTHEZOMBIE AND EMWD.

Inland Empire landscape in Mount Jurupa, California.

and pathogens from raw water supplies. The six agencies collectively perform more than 80,000 water quality tests each year and continually reinvest within their respective systems to keep the taps flowing and minimize service interruptions. As regional sewer providers, many of the agencies have a vested stake not just in what comes out of the tap, but what goes down the drain. “As people rushed to buy toilet paper, and stores were often sold out, some customers may have been forced to use wipes,” EVMWD General Manager Greg Thomas said. “Placing those wipes into the sewer system may result in costly damages. So-called flushable wipes should only be disposed of in a waste bin.” All of the agencies have worked to educate customers on not flushing wipes, even those labeled as flushable. Wipes have different fiber makeups than toilet paper and will not break down when submerged in water. Many brands of wipes remain completely intact for years when in water. As a result, they may clog sewer lines and treatment plants, resulting in costly backups into customer homes. That’s why the regional outreach campaign billboards and social media ads also focus on the importance of only flushing the “Three P’s—Pee, Poop and (Toilet) Paper.” By limiting what goes down the drain, customers are actively doing their part to keep the wastewater system flowing. In response to stay-at-home orders, all six agencies have empowered their employees to work remotely if possible. Essential and operational staff who must report to work daily have strictly adhered to public health recommendations, including wearing face coverings. Many of the agencies quickly expanded remote working options to meet the needs of office personnel who were in many municipalwaterleader.com

cases working from home for the first time in their careers. “The ability of our employees to work safely while still meeting customer needs was paramount,” RPU General Manager Todd Corbin said. “We have worked to provide the necessary personal protective equipment for our field staff and provided office staff with the resources to work remotely. The result has been maintaining the same level of service that our rate payers have always expected from us.” As the campaign runs through the summer, the agencies will work to quickly adapt messaging to the changing landscape associated with COVID‑19 and its far-reaching effects. Ultimately, the goal of every agency remains the same—to provide a superior level of service, reliability and safety while continuing to protect public health and deliver services 24/7. In the words of JCSD General Manager Chris Berch, “This campaign will help us reinforce to our customers that they can rely on us day in and day out so they may focus on all the other things that matter in their lives right now.” M

Roxanne Rountree is the senior public affairs program manager at Eastern Municipal Water District. Kevin Pearson is a public affairs officer at EMWD. For more information about EMWD, visit emwd.org. JUNE 2020 COVID-19 SPECIAL ISSUE | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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How Maryland’s State Environmental Agency Is Coping With the Coronavirus

A stream feeds into the Chesapeake Bay.

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Science Administration, tell Municipal Water Leader about adjustments the state agency is making, the lessons they are learning, and the advice they are sharing with other agencies around the country. Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your backgrounds and how you came to be in your current positions. municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF FAMARTIN.

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he Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) protects and restores the environment for the health and well-being of all Marylanders. During the current pandemic, it is finding creative ways to manage workforce, regulatory, enforcement, and customer service challenges. In this interview, Ben Grumbles, the secretary of the MDE, and Lee Currey, the director of the MDE’s Water and


ADVERTISEMENT Ben Grumbles: Governor Larry Hogan appointed me to his cabinet in 2015 to serve as environment secretary, which also means chairing his Chesapeake Bay cabinet and the state’s climate change commission. It’s a blast, and it allows me every day to tap into my previous experiences in Arizona, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Water Alliance, and congressional committees.

tidal and nontidal wetlands and waterways. Maryland is also unique in issuing waterway construction permits, which are required of any construction that occurs within a stream or a floodplain. We are responsible for ensuring that all our shellfish-harvesting areas have water of an adequate quality to ensure that the oysters that come out of the Chesapeake Bay are safe to eat.

Lee Currey: I have the good fortune to direct the Water and Science Administration at the MDE, which includes Chesapeake Bay restoration, Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) implementation, Clean Water Act (CWA) implementation, dam safety inspection and permitting, protections for shellfish-harvesting areas, and water quality monitoring. I’m a registered professional engineer with more than 25 years in the water resources and engineering field, about 20 of which were in public service; prior to that, I worked in the private sector, focusing on coastal engineering and storm water management.

Municipal Water Leader: How has the coronavirus pandemic affected your operations?

Municipal Water Leader: Would you give us an overview of the MDE and its services? Ben Grumbles: The MDE is an environmental and public health agency with about 900 employees. Our regulatory responsibilities include clean air and radiation; clean and safe water; and lands and materials, including waste sites, oil spills, and hazardous materials. We work closely with the Maryland Departments of Agriculture, Health, Natural Resources, and Transportation. In addition to regulation, we’re a funding and financing agency. We have major infrastructure programs, particularly for water and wastewater. We are also a planning and coordination agency. We’re the state lead on climate change and on multistate and federal coordination for the Chesapeake Bay. Lee Currey: The Water and Science Administration oversees CWA and SDWA activity, so we ensure the restoration and protection of our water resources. Through our SDWA programs, we make sure we have clean and safe drinking water through inspections and monitoring; we also oversee water appropriation permits to make sure that long-term water supplies are sustainable and to ensure source water protection. Through our CWA programs, we issue National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits for wastewater plants and industrial utilities. Our municipal separate storm sewer system program covers a large portion of our state, which is highly urbanized. We also have a dam-safety program and are responsible for inspecting and evaluating around 600 dams throughout the state of Maryland, almost half of which are significant- or high-hazard dams. We also issue dam safety permits. We oversee storm water management requirements throughout the state and set standards on best practices in environmental site design. We protect municipalwaterleader.com

Ben Grumbles: Significantly, but we’re still getting the job done and advancing the mission. It has also highlighted for all, both locally and nationally, how essential the water and wastewater sector is to everything. The first operational challenge came in early March, when the governor saw the wave of infections and deaths that was about to happen and mandated all state agencies to telework as much as possible. Weeks later, he issued stay-at-home orders that affected all Marylanders and their daily rituals in fundamental ways. Worker safety and community health have always been priorities for the MDE, but they became our highest priorities with the onset of the pandemic and have continued to be throughout May. Just like every other state and the EPA, we recognize that when there are severe risks to workers and you’re trying to reduce the spread of a pandemic, you have to be flexible and exercise responsible enforcement discretion in certain types of required monitoring and reporting. The EPA issued a national memo on that topic on March 26, and we’ve been working to try to find the right balance for our state in every particular case. Lee Currey: In this emergency, unlike those in the past, we have moved more than 90 percent of our employees to remote work, while continuing to maintain emergency response capacity and to carry out all mission-critical functions. We are reevaluating processes and procedures so that we can continue mission-critical operations with appropriate public health protections. The questions we now face include which activities cannot be done remotely, which activities can be paused and for how long, and how we restart those activities while safeguarding employees. The question of reentry is one we continue to grapple with today. Our response to this pandemic emphasizes that our water and wastewater treatment plant operators are part of our critical workforce. As always, we need to ensure worker safety and to ensure that our workers have adequate supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE) on hand. We also must ensure redundancy in water system operation and inspection. For example, we sent out a survey to about 8,000 operators in Maryland, including about 3,000 water treatment plant operators, asking whether they would be willing to work on multiple systems and whether they are currently operating under a circuit rider that would give them the flexibility to work on other systems. JUNE 2020 COVID-19 SPECIAL ISSUE | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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The MDE’s headquarters are located in Baltimore, Maryland.

One thing that remains constant is that we need to continue to ensure sure that drinking water is clean and safe and that environmental protections are in place. We are proud that the testing of drinking water continues throughout Maryland during the pandemic. We have also recognized that in some cases, flexibility is needed in the selection of monitoring locations. Given the safeguards in place to protect people in their homes, we have allowed alternative sampling locations. That works well for large systems but can be more of a challenge for smaller systems. We also worked with the laboratories that aid us with mission-critical activities to make sure that they were still open and to identify any concerns. We have been able to quickly move our programs into the digital environment and to do more virtual inspections where we believe it is possible. Municipal Water Leader: What advice do you have for other water agencies?

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Municipal Water Leader: How is the MDE coordinating with other states? Ben Grumbles: We depend on many multistate, regional, and national collaborations to achieve better results for public health, the environment, and the economy than we could by acting alone. For example, the Chesapeake Bay Program, which includes six states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government; the 46‑state Environmental Council of the States; the Association of Clean Water Administrators (ACWA); and the Association of State Drinking Water municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF PIXABAY.

Lee Currey: Share ideas and challenges through multistate partnerships. We’ve been fortunate enough to participate in weekly multistate coordination calls for CWA and SDWA program activities. Sharing ideas with our neighbors about what’s working has proven to be important; it leads to faster and better solutions. The work environment under a pandemic is new for all of us, and collaboration leads to more robust approaches. Evaluate mission-critical and essential work flows to determine PPE needs, social distancing opportunities, and the possibility of using remote technologies. Recognize

the need for flexibility, creativity, and innovation for inspections, sampling, and other essential activities. Move quickly to a digital workflow, including the use of digital signatures and the use of e-mail instead of paper and telephone communication. The information technology (IT) component cannot be emphasized enough. I give a lot of credit to our IT team for pulling that together and quickly deploying more mobile devices. Communicate regularly with the regulated utilities to understand challenges. We coordinated with our water utilities early and continued to do so often. We released several press statements recognizing that in these unusual circumstances, flexibility and creativity are essential for complying with our requirements. Think about the reopening plan early. With nonessential businesses in Maryland closed, we knew we needed to develop a process to remind building owners that systems need to be flushed.


ADVERTISEMENT Administrators (ASDWA) help member states, whether upstream or downwind, develop and share better policies and practices and increase the value of their limited resources. The MDE benefits greatly when its employees can get together with our partners, whether in person or, as is now almost exclusively the case, through virtual meetings and videoconferences. One of the most common themes being discussed by the nation’s environmental officials is that the coronavirus crisis is a wake-up call to accelerate the electronic processing of applications and permits and the implementation of virtual meetings and partial video inspections. This crisis is showing that the future is teleworking, going paperless and digital, and modernizing the business of environmental protection in bold ways. Lee Currey: Collaboration with other state colleagues leads to more robust ideas and solutions. Professional organizations such as ACWA and the ASDWA play a critical role in sharing challenges, experiences, and concerns across the nation. Since most of us are now comfortable with virtual meetings, we can quickly schedule a multistate or multiagency meeting to discuss and get feedback on a certain issue.

recommendations amid the pandemic is to frequently wash your hands, which points to the importance of these systems and the employees who operate them. M

The Water and Science Administration is responsible for ensuring that Maryland’s famous Chesapeake Bay oysters are safe to eat.

Municipal Water Leader: What were some of the unexpected challenges related to this pandemic? Lee Currey: The shortage of PPE; the fact that the shortage of toilet paper led to the use of other materials that had the potential to clog infrastructure; and the challenges of holding public meetings and conducting licensing exams. Municipal Water Leader: What have you learned through this experience that will be useful in future crisis situations?

PHOTOS COURTESY OF MDE.

Ben Grumbles: Some of the big trends that this crisis will push forward are digital permitting, remote sensing, and virtual inspection, as well as teleworking and reliance on technology in our daily work. This is a real learning experience when it comes to continuity of operations. We’ve learned more about how to maintain contact with the Maryland Emergency Management Agency and with local officials to ensure that useful public service announcements are made frequently to improve customer service and increase transparency. Lee Currey: One major advancement is the use of technology for continuity of operations, collaboration, communication, and inspections. Now that we have gone through a real test case that forced more remote and virtual tools into our daily workflow, we have a greater understanding of how to use them. This crisis has emphasized again how essential water and wastewater systems and their operators, supply chains, and energy providers are. One of the most fundamental hygiene municipalwaterleader.com

An MDE employee carries out a stream survey.

Ben Grumbles is the secretary of the environment for the State of Maryland. He can be contacted at ben.grumbles@maryland.gov. Lee Currey is the director of the Water and Science Administration. He can be contacted at lee.currey@maryland.gov. For more about the Maryland Department of the Environment, visit mde.maryland.gov.

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Pandemic Response at the Nation’s Largest Water Wholesaler planning, finance, and operations. In 2010, when I was the assistant manager of water system operations, I left to become the general manager of one of our member agencies. After serving in that role for 7 years, I returned 2 years ago to be Metropolitan’s chief administrative officer and one of its assistant general managers. I cover information technology (IT), human resources, environmental planning, real property, security, and board administration, so some of the COVID‑19 responses are falling pretty squarely into my wheelhouse. Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about the size and scale of your operations.

A Metropolitan engineer inspects the cement mortar lining of the bell and spigot joints in the second lower feeder.

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has been doing to keep its employees and customers safe while continuing operations during this crisis. Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position. Shane Chapman: I’ve been in the water sector for 28 years. I started at Metropolitan in 1991 and worked there for 20 years in various departments, including water resources management and

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municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF METROPOLITAN.

he Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is a regional wholesaler that provides water for 26 member public agencies serving 19 million people in six counties across Southern California. Like other water utilities around the United States, Metropolitan has had to find new ways to continue its operations during the COVID‑19 pandemic. In this interview, Shane Chapman, an assistant general manager and the chief administrative officer of Metropolitan, speaks with Municipal Water Leader about what the agency

Shane Chapman: Metropolitan is a special district created by the state legislature. Its primary function is to import water from Northern California and the Colorado River, and it imports a little over half the water used in Southern California, which is home to 19 million people and a $1.6 trillion economy. We have five treatment plants, three of which are among the largest in the United States. We also support sustainability with recycled water, water conservation, and storm water capture. Since the mid-1990s, Metropolitan has moved pretty aggressively into water resources management and supporting its member agencies in their efforts to develop local supplies. That’s a big part of our business now. Metropolitan has roughly 1,900 employees and a $1.6 billion annual budget that includes our capital improvements program, which runs about $300 million a year. As with many water agencies these days, most of Metropolitan’s capital program is focused on refurbishing and rebuilding old infrastructure.


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With a high demand and limited supply of hand sanitizer, a Metropolitan employee helps prepare hand sanitizer bottles to be used by Metropolitan staff.

Municipal Water Leader: How has the pandemic affected your operations? Shane Chapman: Fortunately, there have been no disruptions in our treatment and delivery of water. That is our primary focus. Our water supply is safe, as it is throughout the country. As part of our emergency preparedness measures, we maintain backup equipment and supplies and keep fuel on hand to help ensure that our operations can continue without disruptions. Being located in Southern California, our principal emergency management paradigm is focused on preparing for large earthquakes, but we also maintain a pandemic action plan. That put us in a good position to respond quickly to this particular pandemic. Municipal Water Leader: What are some of the measures that you have taken in order to keep your customers and employees safe? Shane Chapman: Fortunately, as of today, we have had no employees test positive for the novel coronavirus. We have had some employees who self-quarantined under the direction of their healthcare providers because they were exposed to someone with COVID‑19, and we’ve been working with them to bring them back into the workforce once they’ve met all the conditions set forth by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). We immediately put our employees into three basic groups. In the first group are employees who need to report to their normal working locations to operate and maintain critical and essential functions. Our water treatment plant operators and water quality lab staff are part of this group. municipalwaterleader.com

We divided these employees into microteams of two or three people who are rotated in and out of work together and are only exposed to one another. Not only does that minimize exposure across staff, it also maximizes the pool of backup staff in the event that a team is exposed. In the second group are employees who can telework. On a typical day, we have over 800 people—well over half the workforce—accessing our network securely and continuing with their work remotely. As part of our resiliency planning for earthquakes, we work to ensure not only the physical integrity of our infrastructure and our ability to fix it quickly, but also the resiliency of our IT systems. We have been setting up capabilities for cloud computing, data storage, laptops, and network capacity. We have been building out these telework platforms over the last 2 years, and we had enough in place to get people up and running quickly. We use the last group to track our lost productivity. That’s where we monitor employees who have been directly affected by the pandemic and need to care for family members and for children whose schools are closed and who cannot work a full schedule as a result. Our human resources department has been working directly with those employees to help them. Fortunately, that’s been a relatively small subset of our workforce. We’ve also put a big focus on social distancing, masks, and the cleaning and disinfection of high-use areas and shared surfaces. We’ve developed backup control centers for our primary operations control center, where we manage all the hydraulics and the distribution system, and for each of the five water treatment plant operation control centers. That way, in the event that we have to disinfect one of those facilities, we can immediately switch operations to the backup location that’s already clean while we address JUNE 2020 COVID-19 SPECIAL ISSUE | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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Metropolitan employees install a back board for water quality instruments at the new Regional Recycled Water Advanced Purification Center.

the situation. We’ve contracted with a disinfection and hazardous materials firm to be on standby in the event that we need to do such a cleaning. Fortunately, we have not had to do that. We’ve also paused a limited number of our capital projects that would require people to be too close together. Municipal Water Leader: Is this the first time you’ve had to test out your telework capabilities on a large scale? Shane Chapman: Yes. We were a bit nervous about it, but our system has held up well. We have secure access with all the cybersecurity protocols in place through a virtual provider network (VPN). Prior to this, 150–200 employees were routinely accessing the VPN, particularly those who travel a lot for work. We were able to boost that number to well above 800 within a week. We also quickly distributed laptops to employees who only had desktops in the office. Soon, about 80 percent of the workforce will have laptops. Municipal Water Leader: You mentioned that you already had a pandemic action plan in place. When did you develop it, and why?

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Municipal Water Leader: Is there anything especially innovative you’ve done to maintain your workflow? Shane Chapman: Our use of microteams has been critical for socially distancing onsite employees who are focused on critical, essential business functions like operations and maintenance. I’ve been impressed by how the employees have adapted to those schedules and work practices. It has also been helpful to have those standby operation control centers for our treatment plants and distribution system. That has provided us peace of mind. Municipal Water Leader: Do you expect any of the changes you have made to be retained after the pandemic is over? municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF METROPOLITAN.

Shane Chapman: We developed it in 2009 after the H1N1 swine flu outbreak. Nobody had pandemic plans then, and that new situation was pretty scary. Critical services like water and power utilities were required to develop these plans in response. I was working in operations at Metropolitan at the time and was tasked with helping

develop our pandemic action plan. We worked closely with the CDC and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to put the plan in place. We’ve kept that plan up over the years. It’s a rather general plan—the details depend on the particular virus or bacteria that you’re challenged with—but it provides a framework. In this case, we were watching how the situation developed in China in December and January and started buying masks, asking questions, testing out our IT infrastructure, and putting a work group together to update the pandemic plan. In mid-March, we activated our emergency operations center (EOC) on a virtual basis. We continue to have about 50–60 people working virtually through the EOC. Today it’s pretty quiet, but in March it was very busy.


ADVERTISEMENT Shane Chapman: Teleworking stands out. I’ve been impressed by how well our employees have used teleworking and kept up their productivity in their day-to-day work. It’s been a challenge and has required adjustments for many. We allowed for some teleworking before, but not on a large scale. In today’s world, many firms are principally telework operations, so it was rather easy for them to stay in that mode. COVID‑19 forced us to jump into it in a big way. I don’t see us reversing that. I think people have recognized how it has improved their schedules, for example by eliminating their commutes. Managers who were once hesitant about telework and needed to see their staff face to face now understand its feasibility. There are lots of ways to encourage and support employee productivity remotely using available technology. Municipal Water Leader: What is your advice for other agencies?

resilient and the workforce more confident in what they’re capable of accomplishing. Our operations department, where emergency management functions are housed, recently held a full-scale exercise for a simulated major earthquake. In our emergency response plan, particular individuals are assigned to particular roles, but that’s not exactly how it is going to work in a major earthquake. You’re not going to get all the right people in the right places at the right times. So in our recent emergency exercise, people were randomly assigned to different locations and roles and were forced to figure it out. That’s just an example of the level of effort that we put into emergency management. It gives our employees the knowledge and confidence to respond well. Our employees are terrific. They’ve risen to the occasion: They’re looking after themselves, their families, and each other. M Shane Chapman is an assistant general manager and the chief administrative officer of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. He can be contacted at schapman@mwdh2o.com.

Shane Chapman: Just as in any emergency, you have to be prepared and ready to act. Plans are never perfect, but they force you to think about what could happen. You can’t just have a plan, you have to exercise and test it. Every time you do, it makes the whole organization stronger and more

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JUNE 2020 COVID-19 SPECIAL ISSUE | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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Water Industry Employers' Responsibilities During COVID-19

Diane Campanile gives a presentation.

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he COVID‑19 pandemic has disrupted the day-to-day functioning of businesses and public agencies in myriad ways, raising safety worries and motivating a large shift to remote work. Amid these changes, employers have obligations to support their sick employees, protect their healthy ones, and figure out how to restart normal operations in a safe and prudent manner. In this interview, Diane Campanile, the founder of human resources (HR) firm People-Dynamics, tells Municipal Water Leader about the rules and regulations all employers should be aware of in these challenging times. Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about yourself and your company, People-Dynamics.

Municipal Water Leader: What are the top HR concerns amid the COVID‑19 pandemic? Diane Campanile: Employers are deciding how to bring employees back into the workplace, whether they have been

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Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about the recent federal legislation dealing with employers’ responsibilities during the pandemic. Diane Campanile: The Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), effective on April 1, provides sick leave and extended family leave to employees who are out of work for a number of reasons related to COVID‑19. The extended family leave portion of the act covers employees who need to care for children 14 years old and under who are not attending a school building or do not have proper childcare as a result of COVID‑19. Employees are being asked to return to work at a time when our schools and childcare centers are municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF PEOPLE-DYNAMICS.

Diane Campanile: I started People-Dynamics in 2018 after serving for many years in HR in both public and private organizations at various levels. People-Dynamics concentrates on assisting small to mid-size organizations in need of HR expertise and assistance. Our focus is on employer compliance. I received my formal education from West Chester University, the Wharton School of Business, and Villanova University. I am enrolled at Tulane Law School.

telecommuting, laid off, or reporting to their regular place of work each day. It will need to be determined whether temporary layoffs and furloughs constitute a separation of employment; that will determine whether employees who are brought back need rehire or new hire paperwork. Another task is designing offices that provide social distancing, developing policies and procedures that keep employees safe, and working to create and sustain a positive culture. It will be necessary to enforce social distancing and hygiene measures and to clean workspaces sufficiently. Offices with open floor plans and cubicles pose a challenge, particularly with regard to cleaning the cubicles, many of which are made of fabric, and figuring out how to distance them. Daily sanitation is going to be required.


ADVERTISEMENT still closed, and they’re still going to ask to remain out of work beyond the time allotted by the FFCRA. Under the FFCRA, an employee is only allotted up to 2 weeks of sick time. Once it is exhausted, it’s gone. This is why we are seeing eligible employees request to use the extended family leave portion first. They are saving their sick time in case they need it in the future. Municipal Water Leader: How much total time can employees take from work? Diane Campanile: The FFCRA allows for up to a total of 12 weeks. It is important to note that there are some circumstances in which this time may be more contained, for example if the employee has used traditional family and medical leave time in the past year. Municipal Water Leader: What is your advice for organizations drafting a policy for returning employees? Diane Campanile: Employers should remember that this has been a difficult time for employees who may have lost family or friends or sustained financial hardships due to this virus. They are still concerned. Employers need to act in good faith, make required changes to the workplace to ensure the safety of their employees, and consider reasonable accommodations for employees at high risk of contracting the virus. Clients have considered bringing employees back on a rotating basis: first group A employees and then group B employees. However, some medical professionals have suggested that this increases the likelihood that somebody in the building has COVID‑19. It may be better to bring some employees back while allowing others who can telecommute to continue for now. Employers need to prepare for visitors to the workplace. Consider a notice requesting that those with symptoms not enter. Employers should already have a visitor log in place to keep track of those in their building. Have your visitors confirm that they do not have any of the symptoms described by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). People-Dynamics can supply any interested employers a copy of a self-screening questionnaire for employees and visitors. Require guests to use hand sanitizer and a mask if appropriate. Municipal Water Leader: What sorts of personal protective equipment are employers obligated to supply their employees when they return? Diane Campanile: At this point, it depends on the state and the industry, but we think employers will be encouraged, if not required, to make masks available for their employees. Most of my clients plan on providing masks.

Diane Campanile: Yes; they are going to be responsible for ensuring that the workplace meets reasonable standards. Sanitation instructions are specifically outlined on the CDC website. We are seeing claims come in from employees who contend that they have contracted the virus while at work. It will be interesting to see how that plays out, but we believe that it is in employers’ best interest to deep clean their offices every 24 hours. Municipal Water Leader: What other policies should employers have in place with regard to COVID‑19? Diane Campanile: Employers should create a telecommuting policy if they do not have one already. Next, they should work on a return-to-work policy. Employees may be required to self-screen prior to coming into the organization’s facilities. This can be done through new technology available on cell phones. Another thing to consider is a policy requiring employees to attest to daily review and self-monitoring. Nonexempt employees should be paid for the time it takes to be screened. As most employers are aware, they may be eligible to check their employees’ temperatures. If your organization adopts a policy to do so, ensure that the area where it is done is private and that the staff is properly trained. Municipal Water Leader: What are the best sources of information for employers who want to know what rules they have to comply with? Diane Campanile: For any healthcare-related questions, the CDC; for any employment-related questions, the U.S. Department of Labor. Employers will need to pay attention to each website, along with that of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration. Employers with labor union contracts should work with the union to make sure the measures put in place don’t violate their collective bargaining agreement. Municipal Water Leader: If folks have questions, can they contact you? Diane Campanile: Absolutely. They can contact us at hr@people-dynamics.com or via our office phone at (484) 889‑9682. M

Diane Campanile is the founder of People-Dynamics. For more about People-Dynamics, visit people-dynamics.com.

Municipal Water Leader: Are employers required to deep clean work areas? municipalwaterleader.com

JUNE 2020 COVID-19 SPECIAL ISSUE | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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Operating a River Authority During the Pandemic

The Trinity River in Fort Worth, Texas.

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rinity River Authority (TRA), created in 1955 and based in Arlington, Texas, aims to promote the conservation, reclamation, protection, and development of the natural resources of the Trinity River basin for the benefit of the public. TRA provides service to more than 60 cities, districts, and other large water users in the Trinity River basin. In this interview, TRA General Manager Kevin Ward tells Municipal Water Leader about how the authority has overcome the challenges of the pandemic to continue operations. Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and about the TRA.

32 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | JUNE 2020 COVID-19 SPECIAL ISSUE

municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF PAUL-E.

Kevin Ward: I’ve been in the water business since 1984. I started out managing utility districts and operations. I was a controller, a corporate secretary, and a vice president for a couple of different management firms in Austin, Texas. Then I worked for the State of Texas in a series of positions, eventually running the Texas Water Development Board from 2002 to 2011. I was recruited to become the TRA’s general manager in 2011 and have worked here ever since. During my time working for the State of Texas, I got some experience in training for emergency operations. I worked

there during the 9/11 period, and we did training and prepared plans for a potential pandemic. The TRA was established by legislation in 1955. Its primary mission was promoting economic development in the basin and stewarding its natural resources. We were able to execute contracts with the federal government and be sponsors for federal reservoir projects. We also own, operate, and sell debt for large regional wastewater and water treatment facilities and do environmental studies. We have jurisdiction over an 18,000‑square‑mile basin that starts just west of IH-35, near Wichita Falls and the border with Oklahoma; crosses Fort Worth and Dallas; goes down the coast; and comes out to the east of Galveston by the Trinity arm of the Galveston Bay system. Since our service area encompasses both the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex and parts of Houston, we provide water and sewer services to areas that encompass half the population of the state. We’re a wholesale provider, so we do that through relationships with about 60 entities, including districts, cities, airports, and racetracks. We provide raw and treated water, do wastewater treatment, operate dams, and sponsor saltwater barrier services. Our largest wastewater plant


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Sunset over the Trinity River.

is rated to process 186 million gallons a day (MGD). We also have an 86 MGD water treatment facility in the middle of the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The 25 members of our board are appointed by the governor of Texas to staggered 6‑year terms. We meet on the fourth Wednesday of every other month. We have standing committees to take care of business in between those meetings and an executive committee that can take actions on behalf of the board, which are then recorded at the next board meeting. We elect officers from within the membership of the board in elections held every 2 years. The president of the board appoints committee chairs from among the elected officers and assigns the board members to the committees.

PHOTO COURTESY OF DEEASHLEY.

Municipal Water Leader: How has the COVID‑19 pandemic affected your operations? Kevin Ward: We are an essential service, so we weren’t excused from work, and we cannot lay people off and still comply with our permits and service obligations. We have a fairly low operating overhead as it is—we mostly have operational personnel. municipalwaterleader.com

When on January 27 I first read about a novel virus coming out of China that might cause the pandemic that experts had predicted, I tasked my senior staff to look at our other emergency response plans and put together a pandemic response plan. They went to work quickly, coordinating with all the appropriate managers, and by February 3, we were ordering laptops. Our administrative staff has been able to work from home, but the employees who work in the plants have had to come in. In our plant operations, we tried to stay ahead of the pandemic. Early on, we got additional personal protective equipment (PPE) and started doing training on how to socially distance in the workplace. We staggered our employees’ shifts so that people weren’t crossing paths as much. Internal communication and education helped to ease panic and concern and to provide strategic guidance to employees. We had already been working on virtual meetings, using DocuSign and similar services, and making sure we had adequate security software to allow our systems to function in a telecommuting environment. This was partly because a lot of our people travel for conferences and things like that. We had been testing CudaLaunch for our remote operations, because we had previously been using JUNE 2020 COVID-19 SPECIAL ISSUE | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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A Union Pacific Railroad truss swing bridge over the Trinity River near Oakwood, Texas.

34 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | JUNE 2020 COVID-19 SPECIAL ISSUE

meetings and is not familiar to the people who might want to attend our meetings. To solve that, we’re holding meetings by phone. We found some good phone software, and we’ve conducted all of our meetings using it. We have not had a full board meeting by phone, but we held an executive committee meeting by phone in April, and it worked quite well. We went ahead and held all our committee meetings and did our business as usual. A big part of that success was due to advanced testing and dress rehearsals. We use Webex Meetings internally, and we sent our presentations out to the board members in advance and talked them through them over the phone. I was amazed at how smoothly it went. We coached people in advance and gave them scripts so that they knew to tell the public when they could speak. We’re contemplating doing a full board meeting in June that way. Our state leadership staff have not recommended that state agencies move quickly toward normal business. Many people are extremely uncomfortable with the prospect of gathering together in large groups or traveling. We don’t meet with our customers in person, either. We have been holding customer advisory meetings via Webex, our most recent one being for a capital program review municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF PATRICK FELLER.

a different system that didn’t have the capacity we needed; luckily, we had taken care of that right before all this hit. We set people up with laptop computers, trained them in the software for accessing files, and required everyone to undergo security training. Within a week or so, we had reduced the staffing of the main offices for each of our facilities to 10–25 percent of the normal level. We haven’t been allowing any nonemployees into our buildings. We got noncontact thermometers and require anyone coming into our plants or facilities to have their temperature taken. We aren’t allowing any meetings in the office that don’t deal with safety, and we aren’t allowing anyone to go to meetings outside the office. Everything has to be done virtually or by phone. We have hired additional people to come in and disinfect, placed massive orders for sanitizer, and even started making our own. At the board level, we have to deal with a few quirks of state law. There’s a big focus in Texas on open government and the public’s ability to participate in meetings. If meetings are not made public, you can only take care of urgent business. The big limitation that we are facing is that a lot of web software is insufficiently secure for public


ADVERTISEMENT with three or four cities. They’ve all taken well to them. For a lot of organizations that our managers are members of, we are using Zoom and other tools, because it’s not going through our servers where it can get into our system. I’m doing that on the open-air web, and there’s no real threat because we’ve got firewalls all throughout our systems. Municipal Water Leader: How many employees do you have? Kevin Ward: We have about 465 on staff right now. We have nearly 300 working in the plants; many of the others are involved in construction. You can’t control how people behave in the field, but we have asked them to wear protective gear and face shields. We have hand sanitizer in every vehicle, and encourage people to wash their hands as soon as they get back. We have asked our contractors to give us notice any time one of their employees goes home sick, tests positive, or is exposed so that we can quarantine any of our employees who have been around them. We’ve done that with a total of five or six employees so far, and fortunately have had no cases. I attribute that to our caution. We have a few employees who are a little bit more relaxed about wearing their face masks than they probably should be. At some point, you have to draw the line. Folks are out there saying that their civil liberties are being infringed upon, but our employees work for us, so we can require them to wear masks. We’re doing our best to make sure that we keep our people, our customers, and the public safe while still providing open access to our official meetings. There has been some concern about the transmission of COVID‑19 through human waste. That probably stems from concerns that arose during the Ebola outbreak. COVID‑19 is not anything like Ebola in that sense. Ebola didn’t spread as prolifically as COVID‑19, but it lasted a long time, and traces of it were found in human waste coming from hospitals. In the case of COVID‑19, there has been no evidence of anything other than the RNA in the waste stream. That means it’s a dead, inactive virus—it’s just trace genetic material. There have been some studies on that in the Boston area, and we’re working with the Water Environment Federation on that. We do land application of biosolids, which we treat to A-B level. There is no current evidence of a virus making it through that, but we test the biosolids constantly to make sure we meet all the standards and are researching whether there is a need to test them for the SARS-2 virus that causes COVID-19 or not. Municipal Water Leader: What is the most innovative thing that you’ve done to maintain your workflow? Kevin Ward: Teleworking and telecommuting. This was not something we had in place prior to this pandemic, but we quickly responded to it by deploying laptops to our people. At one point, one or two of our employees had to be home to take care of young children but weren’t working from municipalwaterleader.com

home. There was a government relief program that would pay two-thirds of someone’s salary if they had to stay home to take care of children, but we thought it would be better to have those people work from home. We found duties they could perform at home and decided that if their supervisors could check in on them regularly, it ought to work. In fact, we’ve gotten as much done as usual, and perhaps more. It’s amazing how much we’ve cleared our backlog through working at home. We currently have 72 employees fully telecommuting and 69 coming in a few days a week and telecommuting the rest of the time. It took a few weeks to set up. We prioritized our highest-risk employees, followed by those who worked in the most concentrated work spaces. Our information technology (IT) staff performed magnificently—the majority of the 141 laptops we are now using had not been bought before we started, and many employees had never been trained to work remotely. We know that at some point we will need to have more people back in the workplace, so we are already setting it up in a secure and hygienic way. We’re putting in plastic barriers in open areas. We’ll probably come up with a whole lot of different ways to do things. We may even end up with some virtual meetings. I think the legislature will try to address the question of open meetings in its next session. There’s got to be a way to hold meetings that are open to the public through the tools we have now. Municipal Water Leader: What advice do you have for other agencies? Kevin Ward: Be proactive. Make sure that you consider security and safety first in anything you do. If you use that as your guardrail, the only other thing you will have to do is to move quickly. Put a decisionmaking process structure in place if you don’t already have one. That has helped us to be successful. Our leadership team has been meeting daily via Webex for as little as 30 minutes or as long as 2 hours, processing all the information. We get reports on our stocks of PPE, our equipment needs, our personnel situation, and our IT situation. We conveyed policy changes on the fly and got them approved and implemented as quickly as possible. The employees appreciated the heck out of it. Move quickly, have a structure in place to make and execute decisions, and communicate. Always try to get your job done. At the end of the day, that’s the most important thing. People expect government to function; you don’t have the luxury of just putting it aside for a while. M Kevin Ward is the general manager of the Trinity River Authority. He can be contacted at wardk@trinityra.org.

JUNE 2020 COVID-19 SPECIAL ISSUE | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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Delivering Drinking, Industrial, and Irrigation Water Amid the Pandemic

Crews working with PPE.

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38 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | JUNE 2020 COVID-19 SPECIAL ISSUE

Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about yourself and about WBWCD. Tage Flint: I’m the general manager of WBWCD. We’re the wholesale water utility for the northern counties of Utah. We serve about 700,000 people in five counties and are the sponsor of the Weber Basin Project, which is a Bureau of Reclamation project from the 1950s and 1960s that includes seven major dams, three hydropower plants, four drinking water treatment plants, and an extensive groundwater well and exchange system. We’re distinctive in that we supply water across the whole spectrum. We deliver drinking water municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF WBWCD.

eber Basin Water Conservancy District (WBWCB) is the regional water supplier within the Ogden and Weber River drainage areas, supplying water to 700,000 people within five counties in Utah. WBWCD delivers approximately 230,000 acre-feet a year of wholesale municipal, agricultural, irrigation, and industrial water through a system including seven large storage reservoirs, three hydropower generation plants, four water treatment plants, and hundreds of miles of canals, tunnels, aqueducts, and pipelines. In this interview, Tage Flint, WBWCD’s general manager and CEO, tells Municipal Water Leader about what the district has been doing to continue operations during the pandemic.


ADVERTISEMENT as a wholesaler to about 60 cities and districts in this area. We also deliver a lot of water to industrial complexes and secondary outdoor irrigation water to urban centers. A tremendous amount of agricultural water is still delivered to agricultural centers throughout the region. Municipal Water Leader: How many employees do you have? Tage Flint: We have about 120 employees, including engineers, electricians, operators, human resources and administrative staff, accountants, and a robust construction maintenance team that works with heavy equipment.

who are still required to go to work every day feel that they may be exposing their families to a higher risk. We’ve participated in seminars online and offered safety plans, and managers have been going out and visiting employees who are required to be out every day. We’ve even instituted a small cash bonus for those who are not teleworking, and I have sent them a thank-you letter acknowledging that they are heroes to the community.

Municipal Water Leader: How has the COVID‑19 pandemic affected your operations? Tage Flint: We are an essential service, particularly since we deliver drinking water supplies to a large population. Now that it’s springtime, the agricultural businesses need water for planting as well. We have been identified as an essential service to the state of Utah, and we cannot fail in our delivery of all those water sources. About 70 percent of our staff come to work every day as usual, and about 30 percent are telecommuting, which has been an adjustment in itself. We have implemented a pandemic response plan that we’ve shared with many of the members of the National Water Resources Association over the last few months. We remain on the highest alert stage here, following extreme distancing and disinfection protocols. We are also testing employees who experience any COVID‑19 symptoms, regardless of how minor they are. The only part of our pandemic response plan that we have not implemented is the last half of the final stage, which is the sequestration of employees at sites such as drinking water treatment plants. We would have to sequester them for weeks on site so that we could ensure the continued operation of the plants without the threat of spreading the virus and causing a personnel shortage. Thankfully, we haven’t had to implement that portion of the plan so far. Municipal Water Leader: How else are you keeping your customers and employees safe? Tage Flint: It’s been a challenge, because the employees who are operating our facilities and control centers share keyboards, computers, touchscreens, logic controllers, and treatment plant chemical feed systems. We’ve had to implement a strict regimen of disinfection services every couple of hours and between shifts. During outdoor construction activities that require people to be in the same confined spaces, we’ve had them use N95 masks and do most things in shifts in order to keep distance from each other. One thing that’s not talked about much is maintaining good employee morale. That has been challenging. Folks municipalwaterleader.com

A WBWCD employee wearing PPE.

Municipal Water Leader: How ready were you to facilitate telecommuting for your employees? Tage Flint: We had our set of challenges. We had enough laptops and iPads to disperse, but we found that access to our main servers, which host our big databases, was limited. The more telecommuting users we had, the more difficult it became to access the servers. Another challenge was that our employees had home internet services of different speeds, some of which made working from home difficult. We saw both hardware and network problems at home. We have made a long list of the things that we have to correct to be better prepared next time. Municipal Water Leader: What is the most innovative thing that you’ve done to maintain your workflow? JUNE 2020 COVID-19 SPECIAL ISSUE | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER

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A view of Layton, Utah.

Tage Flint: We had to get fairly creative with our plan to sequester employees on site, which would have included all meals being brought into the treatment plant sites and arrangements for sleeping and downtime. On the computing side, it has been a challenge for our information technology (IT) staff to maintain our access to the servers while not increasing our susceptibility to hackers and computer viruses.

counties, and each county health department had a slightly different take on what employers should do. The state gave recommendations as well. We did well in following our own planned pandemic response. We had an emergency response plan that covered all sorts of events, including a widespread illness, that we had completed about 4 years ago. We just had to fine-tune it to address this particular pandemic.

Municipal Water Leader: Do you expect any of the changes you have made to be retained after the pandemic is over?

Municipal Water Leader: Was that something you created on your own, or did you have someone help you with it?

Tage Flint: Yes, certainly on the IT side. There are several things that we’ve learned about server access and databases that we will change as a result of this. We’ve also learned that we can do more telecommuting than we thought we could. Some folks are as connected at home as they are at the office, maybe even more so. This came as a surprise. That may not be true across the board, but for specific positions, conditions at home allow for folks to be more efficient than in the office. We’ve also learned about how to do customer interaction with the public in a remote fashion; it has been as effective as if we were standing face to face. I’ll give you an example: One of the programs of our water conservation group includes a weekly horticulture class at our facilities for things such as landscape irrigation design or pruning trees. We now offer those classes online instead of in person, and our participant numbers have gone up.

Tage Flint: Originally, we did it through a partnership with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The funding was provided both by the district and by FEMA. Our staff and a consultant developed it.

Tage Flint: Have a plan in place. I don’t know if this is true everywhere, but in our area, we got some mixed signals from state and county health officials. We serve five large

40 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER | JUNE 2020 COVID-19 SPECIAL ISSUE

Tage Flint: During this experience, we are trying to identify and analyze the weaknesses in our response. We will start implementing the changes immediately thereafter to eliminate our weaknesses so that if we have another pandemic, we will be better prepared. We do not know that COVID‑19 is over; most of our health officials are worried that we might be back in this situation next fall or winter. It would be useful to have our plan shored up before then. M Tage Flint is the general manager and CEO of Weber Basin Water Conservancy District in Layton, Utah. He can be contacted by e-mail at tflint@weberbasin.com or by phone at (801) 771‑1677.

municipalwaterleader.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF CHADTHOMAS2013 AND WBWCD.

Municipal Water Leader: What advice do you have for other agencies?

Municipal Water Leader: What are your plans for the future?


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Upcoming Events CANCELED: July 7–9 North Dakota Water Users Association, Summer Meeting, Grand Forks, ND (possible virtual training sessions TBD) July 8–10 (new date) P3 Water Summit (virtual event) POSTPONED: July 14–16 Hydrovision International, Envisioning a Hydro Future, Minneapolis, MN CANCELED: July 15 North Dakota Rural Water Systems Association, Summer Leadership Retreat, Medora, ND July 28–31 (new date) Association of California Water Agencies, Spring Conference & Exhibition (virtual event) July 30–31 (new date) National Ground Water Association, Workshop on Groundwater in the Northwest (virtual event) August 3 Nebraska Water Center/Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources/North Platte Natural Resources District, Nebraska Water Conference: Irrigation in a Water-Deficit Region, Scottsbluff, NE (August 4–5: optional water tour) August 4–8 National Water Resources Association, Western Water Seminar, Spokane, WA August 25–27 Colorado Water Congress, Summer Conference and Membership Meeting, Steamboat, CO September 14–16 WaterPro Conference, Phoenix, AZ September 14–16 (new date) WESTCAS, Annual Conference, San Diego, CA September 15–17 Husker Harvest Days, Grand Island, NE POSTPONED: September 22–24 Irrigation Australia Conference and Exhibition, Sydney, Australia POSTPONED: September 22–28 International Commission on Irrigation & Drainage, 24th Congress & 72nd International Executive Council meeting, Sydney, Australia September 27–29 Nebraska Natural Resources Districts, Annual Conference, Kearney, NE October 19 Utah Water Users Association, Annual Summit, Provo, UT October 21–23 Texas Water Conservation Association, Fall Conference, San Antonio, TX October 26-29 American Water Works Association, CA/NV Section Annual Fall Conference, Las Vegas, NV November 17–19 (new date) Hydrovision International, Envisioning a Hydro Future, Minneapolis, MN

Past issues of Municipal Water Leader are archived at municipalwaterleader.com. To sign up to receive Municipal Water Leader in electronic form, please contact our managing editor, Joshua Dill, at joshua.dill@waterstrategies.com. /MuniWaterLeader

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