Wednesday, January 28, 2026, 9:30 a.m. (Austin time), Austin City Hall
Committee: Climate, Water, Environment, and Parks Committee
0:00 Alright. Good morning everybody.
0:04 It is 9 32 on Wednesday, January 28th.
0:08 I'll call this meeting of the climate water environment parks committee to order.
0:12 We are at 3 0 1 west second street, uh, in the council chambers, and a full quorum of the
0:22 committee is present. Uh, we will just dive right in this morning.
0:27 I will start with, oh, I guess, do we have anybody, any speakers?
0:31 No, we do not.
0:32 No speakers. Okay. Then we will move to item number one, the approval of the minutes.
0:36 I have a motion on that.
0:38 Council morales moves adoption, seconded by councilor Siegel.
0:42 Uh, without objection, the minutes are approved.
0:46 With that, we'll move to item number two, a briefing on the Austin water emergency management and planning.
0:54 And we have a few folks, more than a few folks to present.
1:19 Good morning. Morning council members chair.
1:22 Thank you for having us today.
1:23 It's, uh, it's quite timely.
1:26 Um, my name is shay rawles rolson.
1:28 I'm the director of Austin water and, uh, simon, sometime ago, uh, we, uh, thought it would be,
1:35 uh, uh, nice to bring you a presentation on the Austin water emergency management and preparedness, the all
1:41 hazards approach that we take to be, uh, ready, uh, should unexpected things happen in our, um, in
1:48 our system. And of course, this past week we had, we had a significant test of that readiness.
1:54 Um, and, uh, um, I've asked our presenters today to, uh, to provide you some examples of how
2:03 this work that we're gonna be discussing in our slides, uh, actually bore fruit for us this, this
2:09 past week. So, uh, really looking forward to, uh, the discussion and, and your questions.
2:14 Um, let's see. Go ahead and click to the next slide.
2:18 Thank you. So we're gonna start with our approach to all hazards, emergency management, and our emergency management
2:23 division manager rick beman, is here for that.
2:26 And then we'll move right into what we do for emergency communications, um, which is something that is
2:32 ongoing all the time.
2:33 There's always emergency communications happening in our, um, our manager of our public information office, who is also
2:40 currently our interim chief of staff, amy petri, will cover that.
2:43 And then winter preparedness activities.
2:45 Our operations manager, stephanie sue, will go over those items for us.
2:49 And with that, we'll launch right into it.
2:52 Good morning, and thank you for having us here to talk about one of my favorite things, Austin waters
2:58 emergency management program. My name is rick beaman.
3:00 I am the Austin water emergency management division manager.
3:04 Uh, what we're gonna discuss today is our all hazards approach and continuous emergency management process for emergencies
3:13 at Austin water. An all hazard approach is just that.
3:18 It's whether it's heat, extreme heat, extreme cold, high winds flooding.
3:24 Our process for addressing emergencies within the utility is always the same.
3:29 We, we utilize the incident command system, we implement an incident management team, and we solve problems through
3:36 objectives. Part of that process is continuous emergency management.
3:42 So think of continuous emergency management, more of a, as a, as a volume knob that gets turned
3:47 up and down as needed versus an on-off switch.
3:51 Uh, we use voc.
3:54 It's a powerful software that we use daily for daily reporting, but it's also our, the software we
4:00 use during emergencies when we have to, uh, implement our incident management team, develop objectives and, and work
4:08 through problems at the utility.
4:10 Uh, we were pioneers with the voc system.
4:14 Austin water was the first department to have it in the city.
4:17 Uh, we have utilized it for approximately six years now, and it is now this past year, gone
4:24 on to a citywide contract where other city departments are using the program for their emergency management.
4:30 We also manage our continuity of operations planning in there, uh, and we have internal emergency notifications within
4:36 the system.
4:43 Additionally, for our continuous emergency management, we, we host and, and, um, attend drills and exercises throughout the
4:52 city, not only internally, but externally with, with partners, a-f-d-e-m-s, travis county, so a pd, uh, Austin emergency
5:00 management, and several other, uh, partners that we, that we, that we work with throughout the year, uh,
5:07 to, to hone our skills and be ready for the next emergency.
5:12 Internally, we have life safety plan training.
5:15 We do shelter in place trainings.
5:17 We do emergency evacuation trainings, um, and hold fire drills at all of our locations.
5:23 Uh, our department operations center is, can be activated at a moment's notice.
5:28 We have, uh, uh, a new department operations center, uh, at, at our, over by our north service
5:35 center. And, um, that is where our incident management team actually comes together to manage our emergencies.
5:46 Our incident management team works on three rotating shifts, 12 hours at a time, and we have nearly
5:52 200 employees that have gone through our training, um, to be on the incident management team.
5:59 They run 24 7, again, 12 hour shifts, and we have thir, we have 34 specific positions that can
6:05 be filled. We don't fill them all, every time, uh, but that staff, they're trained for very clearly
6:12 defined roles. As part of the incident management team, we host online and in-person training.
6:18 Austin water has, uh, fema certified, uh, training instructors in-house, and we teach ics and, uh, 300 and
6:27 400. We also, uh, co-host with Austin energy, Austin police department, and some, some other departments within the
6:34 city. Some of the things we do for our operational readiness is our plants op, uh, routinely stay,
6:46 maintain, uh, 235 million gallons a day for system readiness and use.
6:52 Um, some of the materials and equipment we keep on hand, we, all of our critical sites have
6:57 backup gen emergency generation.
6:59 We have, uh, equipment and supplies for emergency potable water distribution points.
7:05 Uh, we have, uh, tankers, water tank tankers, and, uh, available potable water tankers, totes and hydrant trap
7:15 hydrant taps to get, uh, water out into the system if needed.
7:21 Here's a picture of one of our, our potable water tankers that we can take out into the,
7:25 into the community if there's a need for water.
7:29 We also host internally for our, our, our folks.
7:32 We have a shelter in place supplies, which includes hygiene kits, sleeping bags, uh, cots, bottled water, uh,
7:41 res or meals ready to eat.
7:42 Uh, because when we have these kind of emergencies, particularly like this, this last one, we had a
7:47 lot of, uh, precipitation that was frozen.
7:49 It's difficult to travel.
7:51 Our security staff actually shelters in place, uh, at our headquarters and our plant staff out in the
7:59 water system. They actually shelter in place and stay on site as well to ensure the process stays
8:04 up and running. We also keep, uh, water on, uh, pallets of bottled water on hand for emergency
8:12 deployment. And we have emergency contracts with various vendors to bring in additional bottled water if we need
8:18 it out in the community.
8:21 Again, we touched back on, uh, we touched earlier on on some training.
8:25 We provide training for our personnel.
8:27 We also try, uh, provide all of their personal protective equipment, coats, gloves, headgear, uh, other durable items,
8:34 warming and cooling stations.
8:36 We have work rest schedules.
8:38 Uh, we continuously monitor the weather, uh, and we can shelter in place again at the plants if
8:47 needed. Now pass it off to amy for emergency communications.
8:54 Thanks, rick. I'm amy petri.
8:57 I'm the interim chief of staff for Austin water.
8:59 Um, I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about our emergency communications and how we prepare and
9:05 plan for, uh, events that might impact the entire city or sometimes just a neighborhood.
9:11 Um, we we're trying to, um, communicate with our customers on a regular basis about what's happening and
9:17 what to expect. The key to those communications being successful is being timely and being accurate with what
9:24 we're sending out. And so to do that, we spend a lot of time preparing, uh, for what
9:29 could happen, uh, so that we can be nimble in the moment and not have to, uh, start
9:34 from scratch and we can focus more on the details instead of, uh, rebuilding entire templates around stuff.
9:41 So, um, in terms of our communications preparedness, if we're thinking about big emergencies that might impact the
9:49 entire city, things like a boil water notice or, um, a do not drink advisory or even smaller
9:57 incidents that might impact, um, an area of the city, like a sanitary sewer overflow.
10:02 Obviously, our winter event that we just had, these are all things that are, um, um, we have
10:10 sort of standard language that we have to use based on our regulatory requirements.
10:14 Um, we have faqs that are, you know, pretty standard for these types of events.
10:21 We review all of our materials on an annual basis to make sure they're current with what we
10:25 have to do from a regulatory standpoint, um, and, and to make sure that we've got them translated
10:30 into the proper languages.
10:32 Um, we get updates from our, um, ace office on a regular basis about the most common languages
10:38 in the city. And so right now all of our emergency materials are available in 15 languages.
10:44 And we do, we update those things every year to make sure that what we have ready to
10:48 go on our website or, uh, out, out to media or, um, that we can notify folks through
10:55 our, my a tx water portal, that all of that stuff is ready to go, um, and, and
11:01 in the correct languages so that we can deploy it quickly with the, the specific information pertinent to
11:07 that event at that time.
11:12 On a daily basis though, we sometimes, um, have unplanned events out in the field.
11:17 We might have a main break or some issue that's affecting a neighborhood.
11:22 And so we've built out tools to communicate with our customers about how those impacts could be affecting
11:27 them. We have a leak and outage map that, that tracks all of the things that we are
11:32 trying to repair out in the field with the estimated timeframe for when those will be.
11:37 Um, those repairs will be finished and water will be restored.
11:40 We also try to send out information through our, our customer portal.
11:44 We can geofence areas within that portal, um, to, to send messages specifically to the customers who are
11:52 impacted by that event.
11:54 Um, if it is a big enough event where, uh, a lot of customers are impacted, or if
11:59 we're getting, if it's, it's a visible, uh, uh, event where we're, we're getting a lot of media
12:04 coverage, we're reaching out to media to make sure that they have all the information and can help
12:08 amplify our message. We're working with cmo on news flashes to go out to you all so that
12:15 you know what's happening in your district, um, and across the city and can share that information with
12:20 your constituents. And of course, we're sending all of the information to our call takers at three one one.
12:25 Um, the city of Austin utilities, as well as our customer contact, uh, uh, center.
12:32 Oops, wrong remote. Um, okay.
12:37 So some of the things that have happened, uh, you know, we've had some emergency events over the
12:43 last five years or so.
12:44 We learn from those after every event.
12:47 We've, we do it a thorough after action, uh, report afterwards.
12:52 Um, and in the time that, that I've been with Austin water, uh, you know, I came on,
12:56 I yuri hit when I was less than a year in at Austin water.
13:00 So we've really changed our communications approach since yuri, we've learned from these events and we've gotten stronger
13:05 as a result. Um, one of the things that we've done is that we've, uh, created, uh, a
13:12 position on in our, uh, incident management team, a deputy incident commander, who is really focused on the
13:19 communications aspect of that emergency while our incident commander is focused on restoring operations to normal.
13:26 So having that focus on communications has really helped us.
13:30 Um, and so, um, the, the deputy incident commander, when we're activated is overseeing all of our pio
13:38 activities, um, our, our interactions with key accounts and wholesale customers, um, as well as our call takers
13:46 and making sure that they have all the right information to share.
13:49 Um, as we get calls about the event, um, at times we are activated when the rest of
13:55 the city is not.
13:56 Uh, you know, this last, this last weekend, the entire city was activated.