US EPA: COVID-19 Resources

This letter expressed the need for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) at water treatment facilities. The use of PPE is vital for both regular occupational activities and specifically to reduce the exposure to COVID-19 among workers while carrying out mission-essential work.

You can access the FEMA Administrator April 15, 2020, letter to Emergency Managers below.

Ensuring that drinking water and wastewater services are fully operational is critical to containing the COVID-19 and protecting Americans from other public health risks. Handwashing and cleaning depend on providing safe and reliable drinking water and effective treatment of wastewater.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) developed a template for state, localities and drinking water and wastewater utilities to use to provide documentation for workers considered essential.

The recently released Pandemic Incident Action Checklist (IAC) is now included in the Water Utility Response On-The-Go (Response OTG) mobile app. This checklist includes actions your utility can take to prepare for, respond to, and recover from a pandemic impacting your systems and your community.

The App allows users to:

·     Identify and contact emergency response partners

·     Monitor local and national severe weather

·     Review and complete incident-specific checklists

·     Populate, save and email damage assessment forms with photo attachments

·     Access Incident Command System procedures and resources

Response OTG is available on the App Store for Apple devices and on Google Play for Android devices. For more information, visit this site.

EPA held a webinar on April 7, 2020 entitled “COVID-19 Planning and Response: Overview of EPA’s Pandemic Incident Action Checklist for Water Utilities.” The webinar provided an overview of the recently released Pandemic IAC; case study from Todd Brown, the Town of Marbleton, Wyoming Public Works Director, who discussed the actions his small system has taken in response to COVID-19; and a Q&A session.

The recording link, offered below, provides access to the full, one-hour long webinar. Note: the audio quality has been improved since the webinar.

Please contact [email protected] for access to the slides from the webinar.