John Gray spent 22 years working in UK Water Companies on all aspects of water treatment, supply and analysis. This was followed by 13 years as a regulator before retirement in 2007 from his position as Deputy Chief Inspector (Operations) with the Drinking Water Inspectorate. He has been involved in improving the safety and security of drinking water supplies and has established links with other Government Departments, academia and research organizations involved in “homeland defence” issues both in the UK and internationally. He was closely involved in the development of the specialized analytical capability for the water industry. Actively involved with the Royal Society of Chemistry, John Gray was for six years a member of the Applications Committee followed by seven years with the Ethical Practices Committee. He chaired of the organizing committee of the three Water Contamination Emergencies conferences. Professor Thompson has 37 years experience in the management of environmental laboratories including those at Severn Trent and Yorkshire Water. He is currently Chief Scientist of ALcontrol UK, one of the largest contract water, soil, air and food analysis organizations in Europe. Since its inception in 1995, he has chaired the UK Water Laboratory Mutual Aid Group and been closely involved with the three associated sub-groups on emergency organic and radioactivity analysis and the LEAP emergency incident proficiency scheme. He was Secretary of the organizing committee of the three Water Contamination Emergencies conferences.

Water Contamination Emergencies

Collective Responsibility

By John Gray, K. Clive Thompson

The Royal Society of Chemistry

Copyright © 2009 The Royal Society of Chemistry
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-85404-172-5

Contents

Introduction: Themes and Objectives J. Gray, 1,
Water Emergencies: Opening remarks G. Nichols, 4,
Water is life: a view of organisational resilience in the Australian water industry K.I. Gill, 9,
Online toxicity monitors and their use in distribution system and watershed earl warning systems H. J. Allen, R. C. Haught and D. A. Macke, 22,
Water supply security issues and trends B. Nguyen – presented by Hao-Nhiên Pham, 36,
Consequence management within the Environmental Protection Agency’s water security initiative B. C. Pickard, 44,
Application of a risk based approach to security and integrity of assets – a regulators view M. J. Rink and S.A. Evans, 55,
Let’s get real. Real world experiences with real-time on-line monitoring for security and quality. Detecting and responding to events. D. Kroll, K. King and G. Klein, 68,
The organisational culture of managing incidents and risks in the water sector R. Bradshaw, S. J. T. Pollard, D. I. Jalba, J. W. Charrois, S. E. Hrudey and N. J. Cromar, 82,
A simulation tool for contaminant warning system design and evaluation W. Einfeld; S. A. McKenna and M. P. Wilson, 117,
CBRN modelling: application to water contamination I. H. Griffiths, 128,
Planning, preparedness and security of the alternative water supply K. Silcock, 139,
Procedures for the decontamination of building plumbing systems S.J. Treado, M.A. Kedzierski, and V.J. Gallardo, 155,
Lessons learned from summer floods 2007. Phase 1 report – Emergency response prepared by Water UK’s Review Group on flooding P. Mills, 166,
Risk assessment methodology for water utilities – RAM-W™ – lessons learned J. J. Danneels, 192,
Risk-based approaches to water quality management: integrating public health metrics in water safety planning G. Howard, 198,
How standards can assist the assessment of, recovery and prevention of future emergencies R. Greaves, 207,
The XX edition of the Torino Olympic Games experience: planning for and responding to drinking water contamination threats R. Binetti, P. Olivier, L. Meucci and L. Cappuccio, 218,
Sensitive, selective and simple UV-spectrometry for contaminant alarm systems J. van den Broeke, 229,
Fully automated instrumentation for nucleic acid testing in the field D.J. Squirrell, M.A. Lee and P. Wakeley, 238,
Optimisation of NMR methodology for non-targeted detection of water contaminants A. J. Charlton, J. A. Donarski, B. D. May and K. C. Thompson, 245,
Preventing water contamination – a co-ordinated response H. Clay-Chapman, 252,
Potential sources of man-made radiochemical contamination of water resources with special emphasis on the nuclear fuel cycle N. R. Pacey and J. Cobb, 260,
Rapid methods K. C. Thompson, 267,
Processing and databasing spectroscopic analyses and its use in the elucidation of unkowns I. Pierson, 293,
Handbooks to assist in the management of a radiological incident involving the contamination of drinking water supplies J. Brown, B. T. Wilkins and D. Hammond, 296,
Robust on-line total organic carbon (TOC) analyser for security monitoring E. Milks, 306,
Water UK emergency planning P. Fenton, 313,
The Scottish Waterborne Hazard Plan M. McGuinness, 316,
Research related to water security K. Fox, 320,
Early warning and reports V. Murray, 325,
OK, we’ve got a problem, so who do we tell? Inter-agency communication – a water company view D. A. Woolloff, 337,
Review and evaluation of water concentration technologies for analysis by real-time PCR S.L. Cunningham and B.M. Dowling, 342,
Scientific and Technical Advisory Cell (STAC) – getting timely public health advice to multi-agency frontline responders R. Carr, S. Ibbotson and VSG Murray, 353,
Communicating with the public during water contamination events: addressing vulnerable populations P. A. Nsiah-Kumi, 360,
Medical preparedness for water contamination events P. L. Meinhardt, 369,
Keeping the public on-side and maintaining reputation J. B. Shaw, 383,
Sociological and psychological constraints to learning from failure B.H. MacGillivray, 389,
Lessons learned from major contamination incidents – a discussion M. Furness, 397,
Review of conference J. Gray, 401,
List of posters, 405,
Subject Index, 407,

CHAPTER 1

WATER EMERGENCIES – OPENING REMARKS

G. Nichols

Deputy Director, Environmental and Enteric Diseases Department, Health Protection Agency, Centre for Infections, 61 Colindale Avenue, London, NW9 5EQ, UK.

1 INTRODUCTION

Emergencies related to drinking water remain a cause of public concern. This conference will cover public health, waterborne disease and flooding looking at the planning and preparedness, security and initial responses, incident management and the examining the aftermath of such emergencies. It will look at operations, information and data management and communications and their importance in tackling these emergencies.

2 EXAMPLES OF OUTBREAKS

I have been involved in the investigation of outbreaks and incidents of food and waterborne disease for most of my career and in varying capacities. These range from a community outbreaks of Shigella sonnei, a hospital outbreak of Clostridium perfringens, early work on the role of Cryptosporidium in diarrhoeal disease, microsporidiosis in AIDS patients, outbreaks of cryptosporidiosis related to drinking water, badly pasteurized milk and swimming pools. There have been foodbome outbreaks such as Salmonella Enteritidis associated with imported eggs, Salmonella Schwarzengrund linked to chocolate coated nuts and Salmonella Barelli in sandwiches. I was involved in responses to flooding in 2000 and 2007, the foot and mouth outbreak in 2001 and the Yorkshire water drought in 1995. I have also investigated outbreaks of Pseudomonas aeruginosa folliculitis, Pontiac fever associated with a spa pool and an increase in deaths associated with Clostridium novyi in injecting drug users and have been involved in decisions about instituting and lifting boil water notices and withdrawals of bottled water that were subject to faecal contamination.

We have looked at 114 waterborne outbreaks involving 22,975 people associated with public and private drinking water supplies in England and Wales between 1910 and 1999. Outbreaks during the first half of the 20th century that are recorded in the scientific literature were predominantly typhoid and paratyphoid fever. These organisms declined during the second half of the 20th century and in the last two decades the newly discovered organisms Cryptosporidium and Campylobacter were associated with the majority of outbreaks. These differences tell us that surveillance identifies real changes in disease (e.g. reduction in typhoid and paratyphoid), changes in laboratory detection (e.g. Campylobacter and Cryptosporidium) and changes in surveillance and outbreak detection. The outbreaks identified have a wide geographic spread and if you’re in area hasn’t had an outbreak there may be one within the next decade or two. There have been dramatic changes in pathogens over the last 100 years. Will we be looking back in the next century at similar changes and are there pathogens that we are currently missing?

3 THE IMPACT OF RAINFALL EVENTS

Of the outbreaks identified in this work, 89 had sufficient information about the time and place of occurrence to allow rainfall data to be collected for the 90 days before the onset of the outbreak. It was also possible to collect the rainfall for the same location and dates for the previous five years to use as a control.

There was a significant association between excess cumulative rainfall in the previous 7 days and outbreaks (p = 0.001). There was an excess of rainfall below 20mm for the three weeks previous to this in outbreak compared to control weeks (p = 0.002). These data imply that the attributable fraction of outbreaks associated with a sustained period of low rainfall is 20% compared to a period of heavy rainfall of 10%. Because the dataset used in this study are historical the results may not reflect current risks, because water companies may have adopted treatment strategies which limit the problems associated with heavy rainfall. Because 15% of the outbreaks were preceded by heavy rainfall in the week before the outbreak and 28% of outbreaks were preceded by a period of lower than average rainfall in the three weeks before the week of the outbreak it is important to consider weather when constructing water safety plans for public and private drinking water supplies.

4 WATERBORNE OUTBREAKS

From the outbreaks that have been published we can build evidence of what problems cause outbreaks related to drinking water. These include the contamination of surface waters by animal waste and sewage, and problems of the streaming of waters on the surface of lakes. As I have indicated, weather can influence risk with groundwater vulnerability in drought, reduced dilution of sewage effluent into rivers in drought times, lower water table opening up new surface to ground routes, contamination of ground water, heavy rainfall and in some countries problems with ice melting quickly. There have been problems with the treatment operation and management of drinking water treatment works including filtration bypass, failure of slow sand filters, the performance of filtration in removing pathogens, the recycling of backwash water and turbidity control. In distribution there have been problems with cross contamination through incorrect plumbing backflow, post-treatment contamination, network repair and problems with aqueduct integrity. In addition there have been examples where several outbreaks have occurred at the same time that appear to be related as well as outbreaks occurring in the same location as previous outbreaks.

The introduction of new Cryptosporidium, regulations in 1990, has been associated with improvements in the removal of cryptosporidiosis from drinking water treatment works, the removal of some poor supplies and the building of new water treatment facilities. A large drinking water outbreak in the North West of England in 1999 resulted in new drinking water treatment measures being introduced over the next few years. Surveillance data from the health authorities associated with this outbreak were compared to other health authorities in the area that were not affected. It appeared that unrecognized outbreaks had occurred in most of the previous years. Following the introduction of the Cryptosporidium regulations in 2001 the annual spring outbreaks have disappeared and the overall number of cases per year has declined substantially. This works suggests that we can easily miss outbreaks. Problems occurring every year may be wrongly viewed as seasonal trends rather than regular outbreaks. Comparison between areas over time can be useful. There has been a significant burden of Cryptosporidium related disease associated with drinking water. This burden has substantially decreased but much of the burden has not been within identified outbreaks. The disease reduction has been predominantly with infection due to Cryptosporidium parvum and the reduction is mostly in the spring period. It is likely that a burden of illness associated with drinking water still remains.

5 FLOODS

In 2007 there were a number of problems relating to flooding. A bottled water product had to be withdrawn due to its contamination with E. coli. The contamination of the borehole occurred after heavy rain. An incident occurred in which surface flooding entered the final water tank in a water treatment works as a result of seals in the lid not being watertight. A boil water notice was introduced for a short period. The Mythe water treatment works supplying Tewkesbury was put out of use as a result of flooding of the treatment works. The population was supplied by bowser and bottled water supplies. A national emergency coordination centre (NECC), a national surveillance cell, regional emergency operation centres (EOC), health protection units and a command structure were set up to deal with the problem and there was a scientific and technical advisory cell (STAC) set up to provide scientific advice. These incidents raise the question of whether utilities are well enough prepared for the floods which can occasionally affect them. This was the first level 4 incident experienced by the F1PA since the finalisation of its emergency plan. A coordinated approach based on emergency plans was established and the appropriate structures were created and their respective tasks undertaken. Limited resources were used efficiently and effectively. Various risks were identified and addressed using evidence and expert advice. Partner organisations were supported, advice to the public was produced and ultimately public health protected.

The summer floods in 2007 have been described as the country’s largest peacetime emergency since World War II. The Mythe treatment works supplies water to around 350,000 people in Tewkesbury, Cheltenham and Gloucester. Half a metre of flood water covered the site affecting buildings offices and equipment and preventing staff from returning to three days. Environment agency staff, fire and rescue services and other organizations quickly put up temporary barriers around the site and restored it to normal service as quickly as possible. The works was out of action for 17 days as a result of the flooding and 140,000 households were without water. More than 50 million litres of bottled water were provided to those affected. Following the floods more permanent defences were built around the site and extra pumping equipment was installed. The overall cost of the flooding at Mythe has been estimated at between 25 million and 35 million pounds.

The Walham electricity substation is built on the raised ground in the River Severn flood plane to the north of Gloucester. It provides power to half a million homes across Gloucestershire in South Wales. It was necessary to construct a 1000 m flood defence to protect the site. The response involved environment agency staff alongside the fire and rescue services, local authorities, utility companies and the military on 22nd July to work on temporary defences to protect the site from flooding. The work was conducted in extremely difficult conditions. It was dark and wet with floodwaters rising fast and it was potentially very dangerous with live high-voltage equipment within metres of where staff were working. After 10 hours the site was secured and the fire and rescue services began pumping water out of the critical area. Work was completed just in time narrowly averting a major shutdown of the site which would have left half a million homes without power. Power to 42,000 homes from nearby Castle Mead substation was cut temporarily whilst defences were put in place. More permanent defences have now been constructed around both Walham and Castle Mead substations and the electricity industry must make more effective long-term plans to protect the many other sites at risk from flooding.

What does this tell us? This was a severe flood. The flooding at both Mythe and Walham should not have been unexpected. Flood maps showed these and many other critical sites are vulnerable to flooding. Mythe flooded in 1947 and 2000 and narrowly escaped flooding in 1990 and 1998. The summer floods must now be a wake-up call for the water industry and other utilities to take action. A substantial percentage of public utilities may be at risk from flooding.

There are potential risks of infection following flooding. Flooded areas may act as breeding grounds for mosquitoes, there can be disturbance of rodent populations, waterborne outbreaks, contamination of water supplies and contamination of people and clothing of those in contact with floodwaters. Runoff from fields and storm drains can make floodwater contaminated at the start of a flood, but substantial dilution can reduce the importance of this. People whose houses are flooded may have problems with damp for months afterwards. Despite this, flooding in developed countries carries a relatively low risk of infectious disease outbreaks. Prevention can be attributed to effective public health systems and good surveillance. There can be psychological distress and illness as a result of the disruption associated with flooding, and there is a significant risk from carbon monoxide poisoning in people using pumping or drying equipment indoors.

5 REPORTING OF OUTBREAKS

Where a serious incident has occurred it is important for the outbreak to be reported by the investigating team, and where possible reported in the scientific literature. The reporting is an important opportunity for examining the successes and failures of the incident, including praise, censure, audit and learning. It can provide an opportunity for increasing awareness of new problems within the water industry and the health community. On occasions it can necessitate changes in water treatment paradigms and occasionally legislation. Legal action has on occasion delayed publication of scientific papers. In reviewing water emergency incidents there is an opportunity to examine the roles and perspectives, to raise questions and to examine shared objectives by the different organizations involved. It is important to ensure that arrangements are made to get across consistent messages to the public from the different organizations involved. There is an opportunity to examine what went well, what went badly, what should be done in the future and what we are already doing. There is a chance to clarify our roles and responsibilities and to share information with other professionals. There is an opportunity to influence policy to review research, to examine organizational resilience and to take any preventive action that may be deemed necessary.

6 CONCLUSION

In conclusion it is important for there to be regular contact between water companies and the health protection units and the HPA will be working with DWI to improve advice during incidents and to improve training.

CHAPTER 2

WATER IS LIFE: A VIEW OF ORGANISATIONAL RESILIENCE IN THE AUSTRALIAN WATER INDUSTRY

K.I. Gill

Department of Sustainability and Environment, Melbourne Victoria, Australia

“In all my experience at sea, I have never been in any accident of any sort -worth speaking about. I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea. I never saw a wreck or have been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort”

EJ. Smith Captain RMS Titanic

1 ABSTRACT

Most people are familiar with the term resilience. The question is often asked, why are some organisations more resilient than others? Is there a single common theme or are there a range of characteristics that contribute to a resilient organisation? This paper provides a view of organisational resilience in the water industry in Australia, particularly in the Victorian context of a risk and business continuity.

The objective of this paper is to further stimulate thought regarding issues associated with organisational resilience, with particular interest in indicators of resilient behaviour.

A key area for consideration is behaviours and characteristics of a resilient water business.

2 INTRODCUTION

Water is life.

Looking back over history, the supply of fresh clean safe drinking water has been the cornerstone of a well developed society. Water supply systems have sustained the growth of urbanised civilisation since ancient times and today include large cities such as London and Melbourne.

Settlement in Australia, the driest inhabited continent in the world, has created many unique challenges for its water industry. The current drought, being one of the longest on record, has highlighted the scarcity of water in Australia. Drought over the last ten years in Victoria has left average stream flows 60-90% below average. In 2006-07 annual rainfall and stream flow were lowest on record. This has resulted in reduced inflows of surface water into drinking water catchments. About 90% of all water used in Victoria is sourced from surface water and the rest from ground water.

The consequence of low water levels in many reservoirs means that 366 Victorian towns are currently on water restrictions. This creates a sustained challenge for water businesses to manage water quality and quantity risks and combined with the current economic and security environment has created a new set of challenges for a resilient water industry.

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