RCAP network assisting small systems in meeting VA, ERP requirements

By Jill A. Ross
E-Train Editor

As the June 2004 deadline nears for smaller water systems to assess their vulnerabilities to internal and external threats, assistance agencies are working in high gear to help systems prepare to meet these requirements.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) granted $1.5 million to create a national pool of security experts to help small systems across the country.

Technical assistance providers from RCAP's regional network gathered in Morgantown, West Virginia, for the three-day workshop, "Drinking Water Safety and Security: A Train-the-Trainer Workshop." Photo by Jill A. Ross.

The Rural Community Assistance Program (RCAP) was a natural choice to be a part of this training effort. With its national network of regional affiliates working in all the states and its field staff specializing in assisting small and rural communities—those with 10,000 or fewer residents—RCAP was well positioned to help EPA address the need for security training in the nation’s smaller communities.

“When we received funding to help with this national security training effort, our options were to develop our own training materials or to use NETCSC’s [National Environmental Training Center for Small Communities] materials,” says Joy Barrett, Ph.D., RCAP’s director of training and technical services. “It was a clear choice to go with the NETCSC materials, which are well recognized in the field and are very user-friendly for small systems.”

Working with NETCSC and the National Drinking Water Clearinghouse (NDWC), Barrett then organized a three-day intensive workshop for RCAP’s “master trainers” that
was held in Morgantown in late May. “Our intention was to get two ‘master trainers’ from each RCAP region, three in one case, trained in how to use NETCSC’s drinking water security training materials. Then those trainers would go back and train other trainers in their individual regions.”

The workshop—“Drinking Water Safety and Security: A Train-the-Trainer Workshop”— was well received by the RCAP staff. According to Barrett, at the beginning of the
session, many of the trainers expressed some skepticism about drinking water security, noting that the small facilities they provide assistance to would likely never experience a terrorist attack. “They felt that other things
such as natural disasters would be the biggest tragedy or the largest risk to the public health,” she says.

“However, throughout the training session, staff learned to see the VA [vulnerability assessment] and ERP [emergency response plan] processes through the eyes of capacity development—which we do already,” says
Barrett. “They learned that the municipalities that were better able to deal with a natural disaster, a disgruntled employee, or an angry customer would be better prepared to deal with a deliberate act of ill intent. By the end of the
session, the staff was really excited about the training.”

These RCAP master trainers then took their excitement and the NETCSC and NDWC training materials out in the field, conducting several training sessions in each of RCAP’s six regions between June and November. “The
training is now cascading down to other levels,” says Barrett. “The master trainers are training RCAP field staff and extending invitations to state primacy agency personnel, EPA regional staff, and other organizations working with small drinking water systems. We hope to train 25 to 30 people in each region.”

According to Barrett, “the end result of this training effort is that RCAP’s field staff will be trained in VA and ERP methodologies using NETCSC’s toolbox of resources and will incorporate this into their daily work as they provide training and technical assistance to RCAP’s client communities.”

For a listing of RCAP’s remaining security training sessions, see page 5. For more information about RCAP’s security training efforts, contact Barrett at (303) 545-0964
or jbarrett@rcap.org.