Dealing with incidents

When dealing with incidents, Veolia Water is committed to making its resources available to the public authority and citizen-customers.

As continuity of water services is a constant priority, teams from Veolia Water are ready to act 24/7 to deal with extreme situations such as flooding, storms or other natural catastrophes.

Their task is to repair the damaged facilities and re-establish the water supply in the fastest time possible.

Example in France :

For those French authorities who want such a system, Veolia Water provides a telephone warning system for customers in the event of an incident:

• as soon as the incident begins a telephone message warns customers about the incident district by district, and lets them know what precautions need to be taken
• during the incident additional information is provided, primarily regarding the emergency water supply
• once the incident is over a message is sent that everything is back to normal. 10,000 homes, i.e. almost 25,000 people, can be contacted in less than 2 hours.

At the same time customers can also contact their Customer Service Center (CSC) to obtain more information about the changing situation.

Veolia Water mobilizes all of its experts when such an incident occurs.

In the same spirit Veolia Water set up in 1988 a humanitarian response unit called Veolia Waterforce.

Veolia Waterforce is able to quickly mobilize those employees who have volunteered as well as technical resources and deploy them anywhere in the world in order to deal with the consequences of major health crises, conflicts or natural catastrophes.

The unit assists those already involved on the ground such as NGOs, international organizations and the French authorities' relief organizations.

This work is carried out in partnership with the Red Cross, UNICEF or Action against Hunger.