WEBINAR: Essential Strategies for Local Government Cybersecurity

Our chief innovation and technology officer Mike Smetana provides discusses essential strategies that local governments can use to protect themselves from cyberattacks, in this webinar hosted by the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Commissioners (PSATC).

He says the 4 pillars of a good cybersecurity framework are:

  1. Governance (Leadership clearly defines and enforces roles and responsibilities, allocates the proper resources, and treats cybersecurity as a core part of operations.)
  2. Technology (the tools you use to detect, defend, and recover from cyberattacks)
  3. People (training, awareness, and accountability for your team and vendors)
  4. Process (defining and practicing procedures for incident response, data recovery, etc.)

 

You can learn more about these pillars and view the entire webinar below:

 

The video is divided into chapters:

0:00 – Introductions and examples of local government cyberattacks

7:49 – Most common cybersecurity threats facing local governments

10:02 – 4 pillars of a cybersecurity framework for local governments

12:42 – Cybersecurity governance

15:09 – Cybersecurity tools for local governments

18:27 – Cybersecurity training and protocols for local government staff and vendors

21:43 – Cybersecurity processes for local governments (incident response, business continuity, and recovery)

25:03 – Assessing your local government’s current level of cybersecurity readiness

28:13 – Leveraging partners to increase cybersecurity

31:57 – 90-day plan and quick wins to enhance local government cybersecurity

 

Learn more about the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Commissioners (PSATC) at firstclasstownshippa.org

Free and Low-Cost Cybersecurity Services for Local Governments

HRG’s chief innovation and technology officer Mike Smetana discusses free and low-cost cybersecurity services available to local governments.  He focuses on the offerings of:

  • CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security
  • CIS, the Center for Internet Security, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping organizations protect against cyberthreats
  • MS-ISAC, the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, a collaboration between CISA and CISA designed to serve as the central cybersecurity resource for the nation’s State, Local, Territorial, Tribal (SLTT) governments

The webinar is divided into chapters:

0:00 – Introductions

4:37 – Real-world Attacks on Local Governments

9:23 – MS-ISAC Services

24:08 – CIS Services

35:34 – CISA Services

It was hosted by the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Commissioners (PSATC).

Act 43: What Water & Sewer Systems Need to Know about the Impact on Multi-Family Billings

An amendment to the Pennsylvania Municipality Authorities Act allows the owner of a multi-family dwelling to request a billing adjustment every five years if the amount billed exceeds the usage by 30% or more.  This could have wide-ranging impacts for water and sewer authorities that serve multi-family dwellings.  Our vice president Russ McIntosh discusses all of the implications in two articles in The Authority, a magazine published by the Pennsylvania Municipal Authorities Association.  The first article analyzes the language of  Act 43 line-by-line to advise authorities on how to comply. (Link opens in new tab.) The second article answers some frequently asked questions about Act 43 such as:

Is Act 43 retroactive?

Does act 43 affect the way I calculate tapping fees?

For larger garden apartment communities, should each building’s water meter be considered individually or combined with other buildings in the same community?

Act 43 requires authorities to compare metered water consumption with “actual usage” billed. How do you make this comparison if you bill on a flat rate?

Visit the Pennsylvania Municipal Authorities Association website at the links above to read these articles, and reach out to us with any questions you may have.

Bumble Bee Hollow Residential Development

WEBINAR: How to Cut Stormwater Costs with Partnerships & Collaboration

Communities report increased flooding in recent years – even outside the flood zone.
Aging infrastructure is at or near the end of its useful life, and signs of failure are appearing.
Regulatory agencies are requiring communities to do more to manage stormwater, but additional funding is not being provided.

These are big problems, and most communities can’t solve them alone. Collaboration is the key to keeping the cost of stormwater improvements manageable, and this webinar will show you how to make collaboration work for your community.

Our financial services practice area leader Adrienne Vicari joined Jim Cosgrove of Kleinfelder, Inc. and the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters to discuss the benefits of collaboration and offer tips communities can use to form effective partnerships. She identifies specific entities for partnership (including other municipalities, state and federal agencies, property owners, and a variety of non-profit organizations) and shows real world examples of how partnerships are saving municipalities millions of dollars on stormwater management and MS4 compliance.

Watch this free webinar below and contact Adrienne Vicari to discuss partnership opportunities for your community.

 

How Recreational Partnerships Deliver More Value for Local Communities

Bridge Management Systems: Safer Bridges with a Longer Lifespan at a Reduced Cost

Reduce the Cost of MS4 Compliance and Pollutant Reduction Plans Through Cooperation

Jim Tomaine speaks about the cooperative MS4 efforts in Luzerne County

Stormwater management has become a major priority for environmental agencies over the past decade, and communities are struggling to meet the increasing requirements to reduce stormwater pollutants and runoff volume. The cost is simply too high for many municipalities to bear alone, but it becomes much more manageable if municipalities can share the burden with their neighbors.

Take the Pollutant Reduction Plan requirement of the MS4 application as an example. If a municipality submits a Pollutant Reduction Plan on its own, it is limited to constructing BMPs within its own borders or the drainage way of its impaired streams, but DEP will generally accept the construction of BMPs anywhere within the watershed for an MS4 permit that is submitted by a regional cooperative. This means cooperating municipalities can install BMPs that yield the greatest pollutant load reduction for the lowest cost.

Usually the largest expense associated with BMP construction is the cost of acquiring land on which to build the BMP. An individual municipality may not have much land on which to build, particularly if it is an urban municipality in which most of the available land has already been developed. As a result, the municipality may be forced to implement a large number of BMPs that each provide only marginal individual benefit in order to meet the pollutant reduction goal. If a municipality submits a regional plan with other communities in the same watershed, it will have access to a much greater land area on which to build BMPs and a reduced need for right-of-way acquisition and easements.  This allows the participating municipalities to build the most effective water quality measures in the places with the greatest need.

Any improvements in upstream water quality will lead to improvements in downstream water quality, so a municipality can still see improvements in its water quality using a watershed-based approach even if a particular BMP is not located within that municipality’s borders.

When BMPs are constructed on a watershed-wide basis, the construction cost is typically lower due to economies of scale, and the water quality results are better.

Herbert, Rowland & Grubic, Inc. (HRG) is working with the Wyoming Valley Sanitary Authority on a regional stormwater collaboration that includes 32 municipalities in Luzerne County. These municipalities intend to meet 70% of their sediment reduction goal with a single BMP: conversion of existing flood control levees into a constructed wetland with a sediment forebay and a meandering stream channel.

Regional cooperation can save municipalities money in other ways besides BMP construction. For example, the cost of preparing the Pollutant Reduction Plan itself will be much lower as a result of cooperation due to economies of scale.

Hiring a consultant to assist with pollutant reduction planning can cost thousands of dollars. If that cost is shared with 10 other municipalities, each individual municipality only has to pay a small portion.

It’s like sharing your first apartment with two roommates when you were in your 20s. The fixed cost of rent and utilities is the same whether one person lives there or three, but each person pays less if they can split that cost three ways (instead of renting their own individual apartments).

Stormwater management involves many fixed costs like the cost of owning equipment to clean out inlets or conduct outfall inspections.

Spreading those costs across a greater number of users means each user pays a smaller price for service.

Another way cooperation can reduce the cost of stormwater management is by giving municipalities increased purchasing power.  Generally, you can negotiate lower unit costs for items when you buy them in larger quantities.  For example, cooperating municipalities could replace or slip line several miles of pipe for a lower cost if the work was completed as part of a larger, regional project. These savings apply to the bidding of services, too. The municipalities working with the Wyoming Valley Sanitary Authority saved hundreds of thousands of dollars on base mapping (i.e. orthophotography, impervious area, etc.)  by participating with WVSA under a single project (rather than having each municipality bid its own contract).

 

Municipalities have greater purchasing power when they cooperate on stormwater management solutions. For example, cooperating municipalities could slip line several miles of pipe for a lower cost if the work was completed as part of a larger, regional project.

 

A regional cooperative also has more borrowing power than a single municipality, and funding agencies are more likely to award a grant or loan to a regional project than one submitted by a single municipality. Funding agencies prefer regional projects because they believe regional cooperation streamlines costs, and politicians tend to support projects that benefit as large a constituent base as possible. A regional initiative should be tied together by legal agreements that assure the funding agency all funding will be properly administered. (These legal agreements are also required to meet DEP requirements for submission of a regional pollution reduction plan.)

This post is an excerpt from a longer article in the July-August-September issue of Keystone Water Quality Manager magazine. The article is focused on the cost savings communities enjoy by cooperating with regional partners on their stormwater management programs.  Read the magazine for advice on finding partners for your stormwater management program or contact us to request a copy.

 


Erin Letavic

Erin G. Letavic, P.E., is the regional manager of civil engineering services in HRG’s Harrisburg office. She guides municipalities and cooperative groups throughout Pennsylvania through the management of their MS4 permits, provides grant application development and administration services, and provides retained engineering services to local government.

Adrienne M. Vicari

Adrienne Vicari, P.E. is the financial services practice area leader at Herbert, Rowland & Grubic, Inc. (HRG). She provides strategic financial planning and grant administration services to numerous municipal and municipal authority clients. She also serves as project manager for several projects involving the creation of stormwater authorities or the addition of stormwater to the charter of existing authorities throughout Pennsylvania.