When the COVID-19 pandemic struck the nation, leading to understandable confusion and concern, the public immediately began hoarding bottled water as a panicked, knee-jerk reaction. It was understandable to a degree, the actions being recommended to reduce the impact of the virus were the first of their kind. Being told you shouldn't leave the house and that you should minimize trips for basic necessities will lead you to stuff your cart with everything you can find. Of course, what we discovered very early on was that COVID-19 did not impact the quality of our drinking water. In fact, the worst potential impacts from the virus on our water and wastewater services were not its threats to public health, they were the threats to staffing levels at our plants. Dozens of utilities sheltered their staffs at their plants, rotating them out after days at a time, to make sure the water and wastewater systems kept running. During the earliest days of the crisis, the press and the public were looking for any good news to reassure themselves that life would be turned upside down just a little less. And that's where proactive communications about public water's response to COVID-19 perfectly fit the bill. Here was a positive story, no impact on drinking water, that attached to EVERY viewer or reader of a news outlet covering their service area. If customers questioned or didn't think about the value of their water before COVID-19, there was a new opportunity to drive home that point during the pandemic response. After all, imagine if COVID infected our drinking water? Our lives would have been very different. Hundreds of positive stories ran across the nation by public water's higher value. References to our water's value during COVID-19 don't have to stop once we get a vaccine; we should mention it at every turn for years to come. The staffing response during COVID-19 also served as a tremendously positive story from several utilities.

Contributor/Source

Mike McGill

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