Local Hazard Mitigation Plan Protects Bay Area Residents and Businesses
Living in the Bay Area comes with many benefits, and also some risk. Emergencies such as earthquakes, floods, and fires are the hazards most likely to disrupt EBMUD's water and wastewater operations. EBMUD's Emergency Preparedness Program prepares District employees to respond to, work through, and recover from events or emergencies that affect the operation of our systems.
One component of the Emergency Preparedness Program is mitigation of potential hazards to reduce or eliminate long-term risk to human life and property. Hazard mitigation is most effective when a long-term plan is developed before a disaster actually occurs. A hazard mitigation plan identifies the hazards a community or region faces, assesses their vulnerability, and identifies specific actions that can be taken to reduce risk.
The Federal Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 outlines a process which cities, counties, and special districts can follow to develop a Local Hazard Mitigation Plan. Development of this plan is a requirement for certain benefits to be available to participating agencies from the California Emergency Management Agency and/or the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) is the lead agency for the multi-jurisdictional Local Hazard Mitigation Plan for the San Francisco Bay Area. Cities, counties, and special districts can adopt and use all or part of this plan in lieu of preparing a complete Local Hazard Mitigation Plan themselves. However, local agencies must have participated in the development of the multi -jurisdictional plan to adopt it. The 2010 plan has been adopted by ABAG, and local agencies are now updating their annexes (an appendix to the emergency plan), as they are required to do every five years.
EBMUD has developed an annex to the 2010 Association of Bay Area Governments Multi-Jurisdictional Local Hazard Mitigation Plan, which specifies planned or anticipated capital projects EBMUD would like to implement if mitigation grant funding is approved to support those projects.
EBMUD has participated in various ABAG workshops and meetings, and has provided comments on the ABAG Multi-jurisdictional Local Hazard Mitigation Plan work products, reviewed draft priorities, and provided input for reaching consensus on priorities for mitigation. In addition, EBMUD provided information to ABAG about which facilities are considered critical to its water and wastewater systems.
For more information on the EBMUD Annex to the ABAG plan, please see the EBMUD adopted plan under the Water and Sewer Districts category on the ABAG 2010 MJ-LHMP web page, at http://quake.abag.ca.gov/mitigation/2010annex/.