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Member Pipeline - Fax Alerts - Special Edition - August 17, 2006

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August 17, 2006

ACTION PLEASE BY AUGUST 25, 2006!

NACWA Urges Members to Complete DHS Survey on Pandemic Preparedness
NACWA requests that member agencies participate in a survey commissioned by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on emergency preparedness in the event of a pandemic. DHS and HHS commissioned the National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC) — a DHS department tasked with providing the President with advice on the security of the Nation’s critical infrastructure sectors — to make recommendations on critical infrastructure prioritization during a pandemic event. Ed Archuleta, General Manager of El Paso Water Utilities, Texas, was appointed by the President to represent the Water Sector on the NIAC and was recently appointed to a study group of the NIAC charged with providing recommendations on prioritizing the distribution of influenza countermeasures, vaccines and antiviral medication to critical infrastructure workforces during a pandemic. As the NIAC representative for the Water Sector, Ed Archuleta sent a letter earlier this month requesting our assistance in completing the attached survey.

In line with this important request, NACWA is making both the survey form itself as well as a background document that outlines the federal government’s objectives and instructions for completing the survey available on NACWA’s website at http://www.nacwa.org/private/pas.cfm. Please submit the completed surveys by August 25 to Adam Krantz, NACWA Managing Director of Government and Public Affairs, at akrantz@nacwa.org or by fax at 202/833-4657.

DHS and HHS acknowledge in their instructions that the owner/operators of critical infrastructure/key resources (CI/KR) are best equipped to understand the activities of personnel engaged in their operations and the considerations needed to maintain essential levels of service during a pandemic event. As such NACWA members are being urged to serve as a key resource of information, via this survey, in this important priority-setting process.

In developing the survey, NIAC was asked to:

  • Identify and define critical services that must be maintained during a pandemic;
  • Establish criteria and principles for critical service prioritizations;
  • Define critical service priorities;
  • Identify critical employee groups within each critical priority service;
  • Make recommendations to build a structure for communications and dissemination of resources; and
  • Identify principles for effective implementation by DHS and HHS.

As you fill out this survey, please also keep in mind the survey guidelines recommend that responses “be addressed within the context of the broader societal good, and not within the context of any individual organization or community”.

Again, please submit the completed surveys by August 25 to Adam Krantz, NACWA Managing Director of Government and Public Affairs, at akrantz@nacwa.org or by fax at 202/833-4657.