The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) this month released The Drinking Water Advisory Communication Toolbox, which is designed to help utilities plan for, develop, implement and evaluate drinking water advisories.
The toolbox takes into account the differences in scope, scale, and severity of situations that trigger advisories, such as a main break, a hurricane, a drop in pressure, or intentional contamination. The toolbox includes instructions on how to prepare before an event, what to do during an event, 40 customizable templates and tools to use and recommendations for follow-up actions and assessments after an event.
CDC developed the toolbox in collaboration with U.S. EPA, AWWA, the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators (ASDWA) and others and utilized findings from more than 100 interviews with water systems, state primacy agencies and other stakeholders. Findings from the interviews are included in the publication.
The toolbox is available on the CDC website and the WaterISAC portal.