CoWARN Steering Committee Meeting
March 17, 2016 – Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
Attendees
Lisa Barbato, Kaitlyn Minich, Lois Rellergert, Chuck Goin, Angelo Carreri
Items Requiring Follow-Up
1. Kaitlyn will continue to investigate web problems
2. Kaitlyn will add Steering Committee to Google Group to get group familiar with how this works
3. Kaitlyn will reach out to county emergency managers to see if they want to join CoWARN
4. David and Kaitlyn will work on a proposal to see how we could organize under RMSAWWA in Statewide Committee mode
5. Kaitlyn will add yes/no checks to flowchart of what should happen in an emergency
6. Kaitlyn will sort western slope communities to target systems over 3300 for marketing- will do something similar for eastern plains
Detailed Minutes by Topic
1. The Steering Committee approved the January 21st meeting minutes.
i. Recent activations- none-
ii. New members- none yet, but Ouray and Navajo Western Water requested MAA
1. Dan Sieber gave information on CoWARN at a county wide public works meting
2. Reviewed January meeting’s action items
a. Kaitlyn continued to investigate website issues
o B Pro hasn’t done much to fix issue but keeps billing us
o Kaitlyn demonstrated Google Site – what do we want this site to do?
§ Angleo thinks sharing resource information is valuable, but only if the information is available via login only- not to general public
§ Lois: Ft Collins wasn’t interested in keeping that information current, but liked the ability of website to send emails to whoe group- could Google Site do that?
§ Entering equipment information into the database was a heavy workload and people weren’t interested in keeping that up (I think this is Lois’s point), but is there a middle ground? List of inventory without constant upkeep?
§ Lisa: we discussed a pilot project
§ Angelo: having maintained lists of large equipment would be useful (no cares about nuts/bolts/small stuff)
o Kaitlyn demonstrated Google Groups
§ Chuck pointed out that google group might not work for all email addresses
§ Kaitlyn will add Steering Committee to group, do some tests, get everyone familiar so we can make decision
b. WebEOC debate
o Kaitlyn talked to Becky Franco, summarized debate
§ Pros: integrated system with direct connection to emergency management officials at all levels, resource tracking capabilities, situational reports of incidents taking place, WebEOC is the statewide system
§ Cons: would need training for individual water utilities, water utilities might not have a full understanding of the emergency management process/ WebEOC system
o Lisa: Steve Kuhr thought it was his job (emergency manager at utility) to communicate with county emergency manager
§ Do you have to purchase this database? Wouldn’t be an option for small systems
o Lois: CoWARN seems to meet the needs for us, this could overcomplicate
o Voted and decided against it
c. Organizing under RMSAWWA
o Lisa talked to Jeff Oxenford, was given a manual that describes how we would form a committee
§ We need to put together proposal to pitch to Joint Governing Board
§ Would be a joint committee with 2 chairs (responsibilities include planning meetings, budgets, recruit members)
§ Lisa: how would this work with the statewide committee approach that we’re trying to move towards
§ Kaitlyn and David will help create a proposal about how to structure this, how this works with statewide committee, talk to California and see how this works for them
d. Flowchart of emergencies
o Kaitlyn will add yes/no checks to flowchart
e. Pueblo decided not to join
f. Kaitlyn will sort prepared list of western slope communities to those larger than 3300 to help target marketing and start tackling this for eastern slope as well
g. Bylaws/ ops plan – Jay and Hope did a good analysis of how these two things sync up, created document, we will start diving into this at our next meeting