The report commissioned by the City of Ottawa’s Drinking Water Services branch as a preliminary step to help determine the potential threats and risks to the existing water distribution system and its customers, and then to develop a contingency plan to deal with such an event. The City of Ottawa serves 700,000 customers from two surface water treatment plants with a combined capacity of 640 ML/d. The City is subdivided into eleven pressure zones served by eleven booster pumping stations, six major finished water storage facilities of 4.5 ML to 110 ML, and over 2,300 km of water main.

The focus of this study was from the perspective of a terrorist attack on the municipal water system.