EPCOR's sole water supply source for the approximately 1.3 million people in the greater Edmonton region is the North Saskatchewan River. While capacity and allocation of the river is not in long-term doubt, risks to supply include river flooding, and other major water quality incidents that have the potential to cause water advisories. An investigation into viable alternate supplies to the NSR yielded that that Edmonton does not have an affordable, easy to implement option. While EPCOR has a suite of techniques to provide offline supply during localized outages, it is clear these techniques would not be suitable for a large-scale water emergency. To address this, EPCOR has worked collaboratively with Regulators, regional customers, the City of Edmonton and other provincial and municipal stakeholders to establish a regional framework for emergency drinking water supply. Offline distribution is triggered when the municipal system is non-operational (i.e. damaged or under a water advisory). This requires sourcing water from other municipalities, coordinating water transport and alternate water distribution techniques. EPCOR's Emergency Drinking Water Supply Plan (EDWSP) centers on providing a lifeline supply of 4 litres per person per day and details the utility's response based on the duration without water. Key to the response is establishing distribution centers that are geographically proportionate to the population, and the procurement of bottled and trucked water. This presentation will provide an overview of the steps EPCOR took to create the EDWSP and share learnings.
