Utilities and climate scientists team up to prepare for bleak water future

By Lisa Song, SolveClimate News
19 August 2011 Ten of the nation’s largest water utilities have teamed up to connect climate scientists and water providers so utilities will have the information they need to prepare for the harmful effects of global warming. Climate change will create a host of challenges that affect water supply, water quality, stormwater drainage and flood control. Utilities on the coast may need to prepare for rising sea levels. Utilities in the Southwest could face more intense droughts. But there’s a gap between most climate research and the kind of information that utilities need. Current climate models tend to work best with long-term trends and over large geographic areas. Water utilities, on the other hand, need specific information about how their water supplies and local rainfall patterns will be disrupted before they risk investing their customers’ money in new infrastructure. “It’s inherently difficult for water utilities to make heads or tails of how they’re going to be affected by climate change,” said Kathleen Miller, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. “When you zoom in on a particular locality, the scale of global models isn’t able to tell you exactly what’s going to happen.” To fill this gap, David Behar, who directs the climate program at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, helped found the Water Utilities Climate Alliance (WUCA) in 2007. “It really is a Wild West out there,” Behar said, referring to the lack of guidance on how to make high-level science useful on a regional scale. The local data that are currently available are often scattered or hard to understand, he told SolveClimate News, leaving water utilities without a clear approach for evaluating local climate vulnerabilities. WUCA aims to integrate climate models into utility infrastructure planning. Its members include the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, Denver Water, Seattle Public Utilities, Portland Water Bureau, Tampa Bay Water and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. Miller said WUCA has become a kind of “broker” for the water industry. “They’ve been engaging very actively with the atmospheric science community to get a layperson’s understanding of the science and how to use it [for water resource planning].” Water utilities have typically used historic stream flows and rainfall data to gauge future water supplies, said Marc Waage, manager of water resource planning at Denver Water. But climate change will disrupt historical weather patterns and add a huge layer of uncertainty to long-term planning. WUCA has co-authored two studies on bringing climate models into the water utility community. The first report, completed in 2009, identified how climate science can be tailored to better support adaptation needs. A follow-up report in 2010 explained methods for incorporating the science into decision-making. The organization is now conducting a series of case studies on projected climate impacts for San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Tampa Bay and New York City. “The purpose is to work closely with the academic community [on issues] related to climate change modeling and how to make that information useful for utilities,” said Lorna Stickel, water resources planning manager at the Portland Water Bureau. The projects are funded by the utilities and by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. […]

Utilities and Climate Scientists Team Up to Prepare for Bleak Water Future