Date
Tuesday, September 10, 2024
Time
11:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location Name
KICC M100 (Level 1)
Name
Building the Equity Atlas: GIS and Strategic Communication Best Practices to Navigate the LCRR
Track
Other/Special Topics
Description

How can utilities complete service line investigations and find and fix protocols for the Lead and Copper Rule Revisions and navigate neighborhood outreach and public notifications, knowing that every neighborhood isn’t the same and may have unique communication needs? From language to device, Internet access and environmental justice factors, the equity atlas is a tool for planning data-informed outreach strategies. Featuring case studies from Tucson, Arizona and Jackson, Mississippi water utilities on how they built their equity atlas, this presentation will explain how the tool was built, applied and lessons learned for how an equity atlas can be leveraged for similar projects. Tucson Water had a robust Get The Lead Out Program in 2016 and previously removed 142 lead service lines. To bring their program up to date with the LCRR, Tucson Water focused on service line material inventory, improving risk communication and creating a framework to prioritize future LSL replacements. This presentation will give an overview of applications of the equity atlas for: • Public communication LCRR guideline requirements • Emergency response and Find-and-Fix Protocols • Pilot testing field investigations • Water quality investigations JXN Water become well-known for water on the global scale due to the 2022 water crises. One of the many projects embarked upon as part of the system’s recovery was completing its service line inventory, beginning with small scale excavations to inform a predictive model. An equity atlas was created to give more context to all of the projects happening at the same time and to meet the information needs by Ward. This project will go into detail about how an equity atlas was created on both projects, including the equity analysis conducted using GIS data overlapping each city's water service area, compilations of publicly available data, developing the schema, defining equity indexes, selecting GIS applications, and building the stakeholder map applications for input, commenting and story mapping.