An EPA Guide for Climate Resiliency Planning

Many utilities are developing plans to increase short-term and long-term climate resiliency in response to extreme weather events, changing water availability, or the risk and resiliency assessment requirements set forth in the America’s Water Infrastructure Act of 2018 (AWIA). To assist in the early developmental stages of resiliency planning, the EPA's CRWU program designed the Resilient Strategies Guide for Water Utilities. This online application prompts utilities with a series of questions about their system and its resiliency concerns to provide recommend strategies that will decrease vulnerability. This web application was updated in August 2019 to allow utilities to specify their system size and find funding sources for the projects they want to pursue.

Both water and wastewater systems can use the tool. The foundation of the guide is built using the CRWU Adaptation Strategies for Climate Change and a funding list maintained by the Water Finance Clearinghouse. Completing the guide takes roughly 20 minutes. After answering a series of questions that identify your system type, size, location, assets, preferred resiliency strategies, and funding interests, the application will produce a report that can be used as a starting point to develop a more complex plan.

Once the guide is launched, you will start by answering questions about your facility and its resiliency priorities. The priorities indicate the concerns that your system wants to address. You can filter the list of priorities in the left hand menu to narrow your focus to topics such as drought preparation, flood protection, energy efficiency, etc. The ‘More Info’ button will elaborate on any option you're considering. Once you’ve selected your priorities, you’ll indicate what assets are present within your system. From there you can select your preferred planning strategies that have been suggested based on your previous answers. Filter the strategies with the left hand menu to narrow down your options by cost or category. For example, if you want to exclude strategies that require new construction, you could check the ‘repair & retrofit’ category instead. The last section recommends potential funding sources that might assist with the strategies you've selected earlier.

The strategies and funding sources will be used to generate the final report. Continue to the end and select ‘Generate Report’. This report will include a detailed summary of your answers, contact information for any funding sources you've selected, and case studies relevant to your utility. To save a copy of the report you will have to copy and paste the results into a Word document. If you have a CREAT account, you can select ‘Export CREAT File’ to download a file that can be imported into your CREAT account’s existing analysis. CREAT (Climate Resilience Evaluation and Awareness Tool) is a more in-depth risk assessment and planning tool that can be used once you've done your initial research. You can preview the CREAT tool framework with their guide here.

Featured Video: Surviving the Quake

Did you know that almost half of all Americans live in areas prone to earthquakes? Water and wastewater utilities serving this population are extremely vulnerable to damage because of their vast network of underground pipes as well as their pumps, tanks, reservoirs and treatment facilities (not to mention their dependency on electricity!). This week's featured video introduces small and medium-sized water and wastewater utilities to earthquake resilience and introduces EPA tools including the Earthquake Resilience Guide and Earthquake Interactive Maps.  

After watching this video, read about the experiences of actual water utilities that have successfully implemented mitigation measures to address this threat in the EPA's new Earthquake Resilience Guide. And if you wondering if your utility is in an earthquake hazard area, you will soon be able to use a map such as this one from the California Geological Survey to find out.  

When an earthquake strikes, it can cause breaks in pipelines, cracks in storage and process tanks and even the collapse of an entire plant. When this happens, a community can experience loss of pressure, contamination and drinking water service disruption. The first step in protecting your community is to be prepared because the faster a water or wastewater utility recovers from an earthquake, the faster the community it serves can recover.