2020-01 Performance Audit Report: Contingency Plans at County of Hawai'i's Department of Water Supply

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Audit Objectives The objective of the audit was to determine if the Department of Water Supply has adequate contingency plans to provide sufficient water to customers even during a disruption of deep well operations. Audit Scope and Methodology To accomplish our objective, we: • Developed an understanding of the policies, procedures, and processes; • Assessed compliance with applicable Federal Laws, Hawaii Revised Statutes, County of Hawaii Charter, County of Hawaii Code, and DWS's Rules and Regulations; • Compared DWS's performance, procedures, practices, and processes to recommended industry best practices; • Compared DWS's current continuity plan to recommended industry best practices; • Conducted site visits to observe current conditions of various deep water wells; • Corroborated information through interviews with appropriate personnel and reviewed documentation of controls such as inspection reports, monitoring logs, etc. ; • Reviewed Water Board Minutes to obtain an understanding of current work in process and progression of work conducted in deep wells; and • Reviewed additional documentation and information that pertained to deep well operations. We conducted this audit from October 2017 to August 2019. During the course of our audit, we requested and reviewed several plans provided by DWS. We reviewed these plans for any information related to contingency actions that addressed water shortages or water disruptions during non -disaster. We compared the available plans against local and federal plan requirements. In addition, we compared those plans to best practices including other water jurisdictions' contingency plans that addressed water shortages and disruptions during non -disaster. Several jurisdictions had both continuity and contingency plans in place that covered most any type of water emergency situations. We conducted this performance audit in accordance with general accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to Department of Water Supply Contingency Plan Audit Objective, Scope and Methodology 13