Years, actually many years ago, I worked in the water ‘industry’ –  how can water, essential to life, be an industry? But that is for another rant.

Anyway, as a result, I have been warning anyone who would listen, that any bright terrorist/mad person could cause a lot of damage easily by ‘polluting’ a drinking water supply.

I have to say that ‘anyone’ in this case is currently only the Best Beloved, but in times past, it has been people in the House of Commons bar, on a Leeds bus, a group of 100 PhDs, two chief executives of Yorkshire Water, an Offwat executive, and people around for supper.

Well, I feel vindicated as an attempt to hack into a Florida water supply was stopped only by an eagle-eyed water company employee.

Right, dear reader, you are welcome to think at this point that I have made my point and you can get on with your life. 

What is more this might not be the time you want to hear more about ‘surprise’ diseases caused by something which started in an animal and causes all sorts of issues for humans.

Feel free to escape to your knitting.

This is not a story of water-terrrosim but it is about a water-borne issue.

So, I was at one stage in life ( quite a well paid stage, I have to say,) a consultant for Yorkshire Water – and there was a drought.

I, along with my smart friend and lunch companion, asked the CEO what would happen if it didn’t rain. ‘It will,’ he said. It didn’t.

After he lost his job, the new CEO, asked me about this conversation and I said they should do a little bit of planning for the worst and hoping for the best. Cryptospordium, for example.

I bet you are sitting up now, a little bit excited to know about Cryptosporidium. Well, breathless reader, I will tell you.

It is a microscopic parasite and it causes diarrhoea and, wouldn’t you know it, a persistent cough.

It gets into the water system from animal faeces – now you need to think of sheep grazing near Yorkshire reservoirs.

So, for most people it is unpleasant, but for some, it can be a killer.

And, significantly, it does not get killed by usual water treatment.

So, I set up a two day crisis planning event for the management of Yorkshire Water.

They sat, a little reluctantly I may say, around a table and we fed them information we had created.

We told them, it is 6pm, and you have just had an alert that crypto has been found in the water system.

What you have to do with crypto is tell everyone to boil their water.

For that to happen you have to alert them – put something out on the 10.30 regional news for example.

But, watching that will be the chief executives of all the regional breweries who use a lot of unboiled water, hairdressers, hospital managers, people who run pub kitchens, well you can imagine the list.

They will want to know what is going on.

And what about all the people who hadn’t watched the late news and didn’t know they should boil their water before they took a glass of it to bed.

There will be a lot of people who did watch the news and will call the Yorkshire Water helpline – but everyone there has gone home. And anyway they are used to dealing with bill queries and leaks – what information will you need to get together so they can answer the questions they will be getting?

Because of the drought, YW had re-engineered the water system to get supplies all over the place but no one now has a map of where water goes.

And, you tell the rather shifty looking management team, they only test for crypto once every three days – so you could have a bit of a lag on your hands but no one knows for sure.

As they set about making decisions, we brought in their own section chiefs to explain why this or that could or couldn’t happen – and they had to work through changing scenarios.

I could tell you a lot more details but I suspect your interest might just wane a bit.

As a result of that exercise YW re-vamped all sorts of plans and procedures over the next two weeks, and a couple of weeks later than that, crypto was found on another water company’s patch. 

YW’s chief executive rang them and told them he was sending a team to help with the newly minted plans. It worked.

It wasn’t a worldwide pandemic threat but did serve to remind that those people who will have to deal with crises, should be forced to sit through a proper planning exercise. Just saying, Boris.