Hello all,

First, on behalf of the Board of the Texas Section AWWA, I hope you all are healthy and following the guidelines to secure the health of your family and colleagues. To say the least, none of us have ever been through similar circumstances and a daily change in everything we thought of as normal. Donna and I both already work at home, so I fully understand the dynamics and complexities of how you ‘carve out’ a space to keep focused on the work while you adjust to this new but temporary ‘normal.’

Some of you know that I am an experienced Risk Communications instructor and practitioner. One of the principals of risk communications is to reduce the ‘fear factor.’ Here are some thoughts about Risk Communications.

As you know, we have postponed the Texas Water 2020 conference until July 13-16, 2020. Of course, this assumes we will be in a much better situation than we are experiencing now. We are working through any issues for this postponement and will have more information on our website, www.txwater.org soon. The schedule will change slightly to Monday, July 13, through Thursday July 16, as opposed to Tuesday through Friday.

You or others may have questions about the impacts on COVID-19 on water and wastewater systems. I refer you to this link from AWWA: https://www.awwa.org/Resources-Tools/Resource-Topics/Coronavirus.

There have been questions regarding the transmission of the COVID-19 in water systems. COVID-19 has not been detected in drinking water and conventional treatment should remove or inactivate the virus. More information can be found here: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/php/water.html.

It is not necessary to buy bottled water because of COVID-19.

The above information and links are posted on the TXWARN website (www.txwarn.org) and can be shared with anyone.

Our mission every day is to protect public health and during the COVID-19 pandemic, our mission is much more meaningful. The work of the essential employees of utilities is most important now for all of us. For all of you and our members, focusing on the protection of our families and ourselves will get us past this crisis as soon as possible.

We are here for you and your hoa, so let us know if we can help.

Mike Howe, Executive Director
Texas AWWA
txawwa@gmail.com