EP WATER-FT BLISS MIRR CASE STUDY

The El Paso, TX community is working with Fort Bliss to mutually address community infrastructure that impacts the missions of the installation and its critical training facilities. This effort is designing projects to reach toward full mission assurance while also enhancing the resilience of the community.

The concept of mission resilience is important, but the real goal in support of the National Defense Strategy should be mission assurance. Cyber threats, direct kinetic attacks, accidents, floods, wildfires, storms, earthquakes, and aging infrastructure systems all threaten the ability of a military installation to accomplish its mission and a local government to protect the health, safety, and welfare of its citizens. Jointly addressing these threats is a key element in the Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation’s (OLDCC) Installation Resilience program.

El Paso Water retained SONRI to develop a partnership with the City of El Paso and El Paso County to seek an OLDCC Military Installation Resilience Review (MIRR) study grant. The project studied the water, wastewater, and stormwater infrastructure in the El Paso region, and began design on critical upgrades or replacements for infrastructure that support the force projection and training missions of the Army on Fort Bliss and the McGregor Range. This project is contributing directly to the ability of Fort Bliss to meet the Department of Defense directive to achieve 14-day mission assurance in the face of resilience threats and is setting the community on track to achieve their own 14-day resilience capability.

SONRI helped manage the grant and execute the study project. As the Project Coordinator of the Fort Bliss Regional Resilience Report, the SONRI-Meurer Team:

• Wrote the Request for Proposals and supported El Paso Water in selecting a Study Contractor.
• Provided and utilized our one-of-a-kind MIRR Grant Partner Cost Tracking and Reporting Tool to support grant budget and activity monitoring.
• Supported El Paso Water staff in all aspects of grant management and reporting.
• Provided quality assurance/quality control oversight of the Study Contractor to ensure their final product is actionable and fundable.
• Provided mission subject matter expert input into the study process and the Fort Bliss Regional Resilience Report to ensure that projects selected for analysis and design support military mission resilience and assurance.

Results

• The project identified over 88 potential projects and focused on 10 critical projects that will provide the most impact on mission assurance and community resilience.
• The community is now pursuing a follow-on OLDCC grant to focus specifically on design of infrastructure and improvements to emergency coordination protocols. This project will address specific infrastructure vulnerabilities identified in the previous study, and develop new communication protocols and training to support effective contingency response in case of water supply emergencies and flooding events. 

This project and its follow-on will give El Paso Water a leg up for other federal funding, including OLDCC’s Defense Community Infrastructure Program (DCIP) grants program. In addition, this project is promoting an ever-increasing degree of communication and cooperation between Fort Bliss and the defense communities who host it. The SONRI-Meurer Team is proud to play a key role in this project!