TVWD’S EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS FRAMEWORK 1
TVWD’s Emergency Preparedness Framework
Michael J. Britch
Portland State University
Abstract
This paper provides an important framework to address a catastrophic natural disaster facing our region and a critical resource to the society needed to minimize the impacts of this event when it occurs. The event is the Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) earthquake, which was last occurred 315 years ago. The CSZ fault is located off the Oregon coast extending 800 miles from the northern California to British Columbia. It is expected to release a magnitude 9.0 earthquake, similar to the one that devastated Tohoku, Japan in 2011. Water is a critical resource for the community, essential for life and the economic viability of a region. This paper explores what is known in the rapidly developing area of emergency preparedness and water systems. The Tualatin Valley Water District (District), serving over 200,000 people in Washington County, Oregon, is taking proactive steps to prepare itself to be more resilient for this type of event, thereby minimizing the effects of it when it occurs. This paper explores current literature on the topic, includes the result of a survey conducted to identify the current state of the District’s preparedness, and presents a proposed emergency preparedness framework for the District to ready for this kind of significant natural disaster.
Keywords: Cascadia subduction zone earthquake, water systems, emergency preparedness, resiliency, framework.
Introduction
Water is a critical resource. “The minimum amount of water required for survival varies based on current weather conditions. The World Health Organization estimates that the basic requirement for survival is 2 to 4 gallons per day per person, which accounts for drinking and food, basic hygiene, and basic cooking need. In extreme situations, people require approximately 1 gallon per person per day” (DHS, 2015b). Without water there can be no life. It is essential. Adequate and reliable water supplies are also a necessary component to help support a vibrant economy. As the second largest water provider in the State of Oregon, serving approximately 200,000 people in Washington County which is part of the Portland Metropolitan area, providing safe, reliable water to its customers is of vital concern to the Tualatin Valley Water District (TVWD, District).
Disruption of safe drinking water supplies can have a profound impact on a community or a region. This paper explores some of the kinds of events that can impact this supply, including one of paramount importance to our region, the Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) earthquake. This paper begins by describing the purpose of this work followed by the background and significance of the kinds of events that can impact water systems and based on that, then key related research questions for this paper are described. Next the paper describes the research methods used as part of this work. Then the findings from the research are discussed. Finally a conclusion is provided.
Purpose
The focus of this capstone project pertains to an extremely large earthquake that will someday affect our region, the Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake. This capstone project focuses on understanding this event and as well as natural disaster preparedness and response for utilities. Based on this it develops an emergency preparedness framework for a municipal water agency and its related water infrastructure, such that if implemented, would result in a much lower impact of the earthquake on the community and a shorter period of recovery with respect to the water supply and distribution to the community. This capstone work also identifies the estimated current level of preparedness for the District, which also serves as a preliminary gap analysis with respect to complete preparedness for this event.
Oregon is located at the western edge of the North American tectonic plate. This continental plate intersects several tectonic plates off the Oregon coast including the Juan de Fuca, Gorda, and Explorer Plates. These plates intersect the North American Plate at a location identified as the Cascadia Subduction Zone. Recent research indicates this fault ruptures on a somewhat repeatable pattern. The recent research further suggests that a magnitude (M) 9 earthquake could be expected at any time (Wang, Raskin and Wolf, 2013). Awareness of the Cascadia Subduction Zone Earthquake is a relatively new phenomenon with researchers only beginning to understand the zone’s potential to release a devastating earthquake in the 1980s. As described by the Oregon Resilience Plan it may take one month to one year for water infrastructure to recover in the Valley and between one to three years along the coast (Wang, Raskin and Wolf, 2013). The Cascadia Subduction Zone fault extends eight hundred miles from Northern California to British Columbia. It is expected to release M9 earthquakes at regular intervals with the last occurring approximately 300 years ago, but with an average frequency of 500 years, and a range of between as few as 200 years to as many as 1,000 years between major events. The estimated economic impact for Oregon and Washington combined is $81 billion. Besides from the prolonged ground shaking itself, damage can also occur from liquefaction, earthquake induced landslides, and lateral spreading (DOGAMI, 2010). FEMA is currently planning for the event. The key attributes of the event that is being planned for is illustrated in Figure 1 (FEMA, 2014).
Figure 1. FEMA CSZ Earthquake Planning Scenario
Background and Significance
Many events can impact water systems, natural and manmade. Examples of some of these and their impacts on water systems and the affected communities are described below. The kinds of events described below include hurricanes like Sandy and Katrina, flooding in Colorado, chemical spills such as what happened in West Virginia, and toxic algae blooms like the event experienced in Toledo, Ohio. Another category of natural disasters can have an even more devastating impact on water systems is earthquakes. This category of natural disasters is of regional significance given the proximity of the Cascadia Subduction Zone fault that lies off the coast of Oregon extending from northern California to British Columbia. This CSZ earthquake is the focus of preparedness in this paper. When this fault ruptures again, it will have a profound impact on the region, the likes of which has not been witnessed in recent times. However, experts believe that it may be similar to the magnitude 9.0 earthquake that occurred in Tohoku, Japan on March 11, 2011. Because of the length of the fault, the CSZ earthquake could have an even more far reaching impact.
The effects of Hurricane Sandy illustrate some interdependencies between water systems and other supporting infrastructure systems like transportation and the energy sector where refueling generators became an issue. “During Hurricane Sandy in 2012, some parts of Long Island, New York, lost their water supply due to a loss of electric power. Emergency generators provided power to a majority of the water system on Long Island” (DHS, 2015a). Hurricane Sandy was a major natural disaster that hit the northeastern part of the United States in October 2012. It included major flooding and destruction. It resulted in dozens of deaths. It became the second most expensive natural disaster in the United States at roughly $68 billion, second only to Hurricane Katrina that caused roughly $125 billion in destruction. Some of the lessons learned included the need to have improvements in transportation, power, and communication systems. It also raised the need to better address aging infrastructure and highlighted the need to be cost effective in developing risk reduction strategies and to plan to implement improvements over time (Hill, 2014).
Hurricanes can cause large metropolitan areas to experience wide spread outages of water service. “After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, portions of New Orleans went without water for a period of 2 months” (DHS, 2015b). In the aftermath and after $14 billion being spent on upgrades to the levee system around New Orleans by the Corp of Engineers, a number of lessons were learned. Some of these included the need to employ a risk reduction strategy when deciding on which improvements to implement; an appropriate design standard needs to be implemented coupled with a much better understanding of the disaster event; protection systems must be designed to operate in union rather than as a conglomerate of disjointed projects; and that rebuilding efforts can be significantly streamlined by using an expedited environmental review process to address the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (Reid, 2013).
Flooding can also render water systems and source water unusable. In 2013 Colorado experienced significant flooding that severely impacted water system including damage to treatment plants and water mains. (DHS, 2015b). The Colorado flooding resulted in extensive damage to areas of Colorado from what’s now recognized as a 1,000-year flood. Throughout a period of six days, 17-20 inches of rainfall was recorded for Colorado’s Front Range. The damage resulted in 10 deaths, 19,000 homes damaged, hundreds of miles of roads closed and $2 billion in property damage. Some of the key lessons learned include that due to the destruction of roads, access to areas requiring repair of its infrastructure was hindered; emergency water connections to other systems is important; controlling how accurate information is provided to the public is important as inaccurate information was being put out on Facebook postings and with tweets; that there was a huge benefit to having multiple supply sources for some communities; and that good maintenance, good records, and having emergency response plans are vital (Buehrer, 2013).
Manmade events also contaminate sources for drinking water as well, rendering the water unusable. This was demonstrated recently by the chemical release in 2014 that affected 300,000 West Virginia residents (AWWA, 2014). This was a result of the release of a toxic chemical, methylcyclohexane spill that led to a “do-not-drink” orders in the Charleston West Virginia area (DHS, 2015b).
Eutrophication, cyanobacteria blooms caused by agricultural land run-off or releases of sewage into source waters can also create problems related to source water for drinking water. This occurring in Toledo, Ohio in 2014 that resulting in a “do-not-use water” order. In particular, “toxic algae blooms from Lake Erie entered the Toledo, Ohio water system in the summer of 2014,” affecting more than 400,000 customers (DHS, 2015b).
Of all types of natural disasters or other events that can impact water systems, perhaps the most significant are earthquakes. Earthquakes and their impacts on water systems is the primary focus of this capstone paper. For large earthquakes, their impact can be far reaching and thus their impact on water system and the related communities can be significant. For Oregon and the broader Pacific Northwest region, this is the kind of significant earthquake that has occurred in the past and will be expected in the future.
Earthquakes impact water systems in many ways include damaging the associated pipelines, pump stations, storage reservoirs and water treatment plants. “For example, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake in Baja, California, damaged two water treatment plants due to the water oscillating in storage tanks… During the 1994 Northridge earthquake in southern California, three major transmission systems, which provide over three-quarters of the water to the City of Los Angeles, were disrupted as a result of pipe damage in more than 1,000 locations” (DHS, 2015a). A reliable water supply is also a vital element in firefighting. The lack of this reliability was demonstrated by the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake that also resulted in extensive fire damage to the city. Firefighting capabilities during that event were rendered useless due to the significant failures of the water system infrastructure (CREW, 2013). The San Francisco Public Utility Commission is currently completing a $4.6 billion Water System Improvement Program to significantly improve the resiliency of its water infrastructure for a system that includes multiple active fault crossings (Landers, 2014).
Research Questions
The Tualatin Valley Water District is the State’s second largest water utility serving much of Washington County. Its mission is to provide quality water and customer service. It provides safe, reliable drinking water to a service area population over 200,000; large industrial customers like Intel, Maxim Integrated Products, Nike, and Resers Fine Foods; and two large regional hospitals, St. Vincent and Kaiser Permanente. All of these industries and critical customers are heavily reliant on having large supplies of water. Water is a vitally important resource for a healthy and robust community. “Washington County is one of the economic engines for the State, and that engine runs on water” (Duyck, 2013). This capstone work proposes that there is no adequate framework specific to the needs of the District for emergency preparedness that addresses all the elements for the District to truly develop itself into a resilient water agency that is prepared to meet the needs of the community it serves related to providing one of the most critical resources and human needs, safe drinking water.
There are two questions posed by this research. The first is what areas need to be addressed for the District to be prepared for a major earthquake? The second research question is what is the District’s current state of preparedness? These research questions relate to how a public water utility can be effectively prepared for earthquakes, other natural disasters and emergencies. This capstone work includes developing a framework to allow the District to be a more prepared and resilient agency. While the proposed resiliency framework is being developed to address this most significant natural disaster, it is also intended to be scalable and applicable to lesser events.
Research Methods
This subject area is not only broad, but the understanding around it is in a state of development. As such multiple research methods were employed, the second of which involved multiple parts. The first research method involved literature review. A variety of sources were available related to this issue. Many of the most recent, relevant documents were incorporated into this work. Because of the importance of the broader emergency preparedness and disaster recovery topic, there are many more references that could be reviewed, however, they are older documents and less relevant to the specifics of the topic. Because this information on this topic is growing rapidly, it was the intent to try to limit the literature to the most current sources, one of which was still in draft form (NIST, 2015).