Wednesday, January 28, 2026, 9:30 a.m. (Austin time), Austin City Hall
Committee: Climate, Water, Environment, and Parks Committee
The Climate, Water, Environment, and Parks Committee met on January 28, 2026, with no public speakers present. The committee received a briefing from Austin Water on its all-hazards emergency management and preparedness program, including lessons from Winter Storm Uri and the most recent winter storm, and council members asked questions about outreach to apartment residents, cybersecurity, main break response, and fire suppression systems. The committee then heard a briefing on the UT City CoLab, a city-UT Austin research collaboration on climate projections and resilience projects. Finally, Parks and Recreation presented updates on its KPIs and key milestones, with the chair framing a broader effort over the next several months to tie performance measures and service-level goals to budget and bond decisions. The minutes were approved without objection.
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.