Central Lake County Joint Action Water Agency Risk and Resilience Assessment

In response to the requirements of AWIA, Central Lake County Joint Action Water Agency (CLCJAWA) needed to conduct a Risk and Resilience Assessment (RRA) and update to their existing Emergency Response Plan (ERP). The CLCJAWA is a public utility that provides drinking water to 284,000 people in Central Lake County, Illinois. CLCJAWA provides drinking water to 13 communities. The water system consists of a raw water intake; a raw water pumping station; two miles of transmission pipeline to transport Lake Michigan water to a water treatment facility capable of treating 50 million gallons per day (mgd) of water; a booster pump station to maintain water pressure to the outlying communities; and more than 32 miles of finished water transmission pipeline.

Based on the population served by the CLCJAWA, the RRA needed to be completed and certification submitted to U.S. EPA by March 31, 2020. HR Green completed the Risk and Resilience Assessment for the water system. This assessment was completed in a collaborative manner in which HR Green and appropriate representatives of the CLCJAWA participated. A large portion of this project is associated with the facilitation of meetings in which all stakeholders discuss and agree upon such matters as the mission of the CLCJAWA’s water system, the critical assets of the system, the threats against which it must be protected, the consequences that would result from the loss of certain critical assets and the effectiveness of existing security measures where they exist. The Risk and Resilience Assessment was completed in March 2020 and the development of the Emergency Response Plan (ERP) was completed in September 2020.