Imagine being in the midst of a heat wave without access to running water in your home because of a disaster at the water treatment plant.
That's what citizens in one Texas city are dealing with right now.
Locally, the Windsor Utilities Commission and Union Water Supply are working to build redundancy in the systems so that, if disaster strikes, water can be delivered from one system to the other. The Windsor Utilities Commission provides water to residents in Windsor, Tecumseh, and LaSalle while the Union Water Supply provides water to Essex, Leamington, Kingsville, and Lakeshore.
"Neither of our systems are really interconnected where we could provide emergency supply water to one another to obviously get each other through an emergency situation," said Garry Rossi, vice president of water operations for the Windsor Utilities Commission.
There are many emergency situations that could threaten the water supply. In Texas, a broken pipe has left 165,000 people without water during a heat wave. In 2014, over half a million residents in Toledo, Ohio were unable to use their water because of toxins from the algae bloom growing in Lake Erie.
"We take our raw water from the Detroit River and Union takes theirs from Lake Erie, so things such as chemical spills, blue-green algae, physical damage to our intake structures, cyber-attacks or major unforeseen physical damage such as a tornado and things of that nature could really cripple our water systems," said Rossi.
This week, both boards approved completing a conceptual design and financial assessment of a shared water reservoir and pump station to provide a backup to both systems. It's estimated the system could cost around $120 million. Cost-sharing and location have not yet been determined.
A report on the conceptual design of the shared reservoir is due back before both boards in early 2023.
