Monday, September 16, 2024
SPRINGTOWN — After almost a year of dealing with technical issues, Walnut Creek Special Utility District finally announced that its new mass notification system Everbridge is up and running.
This news was delivered to the board of directors at its Aug. 19 meeting.
“One employee has finished training, and another will be finished by the end of the week,” SUD general manager James Blackwood said to The Tri-County Reporter Aug. 20. “So, essentially, Everbridge should be ready to go by the end of week.”
Before now, Walnut Creek SUD used an alert system that customers could (and still can) sign up for on the district’s website to receive emails or texts about water main repairs, boil water notices and other notifications. Customers addressed the board at meetings to say that a better system was needed, and one person suggested the company Everbridge.
The SUD collected bids for a mass notification system, and the cheapest bid came from Everbridge. So, the board awarded the contract to Everbridge in September 2023.
Setting up the new system was only supposed to take a few weeks, but the district faced technical issues in establishing the new system.
“Their (information technology) department and ours finally figured out why the two systems would not merge and straightened the problem out,” Blackwood said.
Everbridge’s system is expected to allow the district to narrow alerts to impacted neighborhoods. This is an upgrade from the alert system on the SUD’s website that notifies all who signed up, even if the message doesn’t impact them.
These alerts from Everbridge are supposed to be delivered by text, email and phone calls, but Blackwood reported last month that the district was trying to resolve a glitch where the system was only sending emails.
