How EPA Can Help Utilities Be More Climate Change Resilient

By Christian Bonawandt

As global climate conditions change, water utilities face a variety of stressors, including drought, flooding, rising sea levels, saltwater intrusion, and more. These changing conditions put increasing amounts of pressure on utilities to upgrade and adapt their operations and infrastructure. Unfortunately, many utilities lack two key things needed to become more climate change resilient: the expertise to determine the most critical projects to invest in, and the funding needed to implement them.

On December 12, 2022, the U.S. EPA held a webinar to showcase the various financial and technical resources available to water utilities of all sizes to help build more climate-resilient infrastructure and operations.

The Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF) is one such program. Dallas Shattuck, a physical scientist at the EPA, described the program to webinar attendees. The EPA receives funding for the DWSRF from Congress, which then awards capitalization grants to each state and Puerto Rico for infrastructure projects. Washington D.C. and Native American territories can also apply for funding through the DWSRF. Most states are also required to match 20% of all funding received through the program.

The DWSRF allows states to provide below-market-rate loans to public water systems, as well as some private community systems as permitted by state laws. Recipients typically repay their loans over 20 to 40 years. Those repayments are returned to the pool of funding used for future DWSRF projects.

Types of climate-related projects that can be funded by the DWSRF include:

• Establishing interconnections and partnerships with other utilities for continued service in the event of an emergency.
• Energy and water efficiency upgrades.
• Treating alternative sources with differing water quality and vulnerabilities.
• Relocating or deepening wells, aquifers, or other water sources.
• Increasing finished water storage capacity.
• Adding backflow prevention systems.
• Conducting risk and vulnerability assessments.
• Resiliency and recovery-related infrastructure improvements, such as adding/upgrading backup generators, telemetry systems for remote operation, saltwater-resistance equipment, waterproofing and sealing structures, and adding wind-resistant features.
• Planning and design of any of the project types listed above.

In addition to operational and infrastructure projects, up to 31% of capitalization grants under the DWSRF can be used for set-aside activities. This includes technical assistance to small water systems (populations under 10,0000), state water system supervision, source water protection programs, capacity development, and operator certification programs. 

Shattuck noted that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) that was signed in 2021 included an additional $50 billion in EPA funding to strengthen U.S. drinking water and wastewater systems. Approximately $30 billion will be made available through existing DWSRF programs, which means the EPA will have a “huge influx of funding available for the next five years,” she said.

During a Q&A session, Shattuck added, that while this webinar was focused on climate resilience, DWSRF money can be used for a range of infrastructure and asset projects, including arsenic or nitrate testing and treatment, and more.

Curt Baranowski, who leads EPA’s Creating Resilient Water Utilities (CRWU) initiative, took over to talk about his program’s mission and the resources it can offer utilities. The purpose of CRWU is to provide practical tools, training, and technical assistance to build climate-resilient water systems. One way that CRWU does this is by taking data from federal agencies and putting it into formats that utility leaders and municipalities can understand and implement. The goal is to help answer the question, “What is the potential future going to look like and what can we do about it?”

The results are a series of tools that water utilities can access to start developing climate resiliency plans. The first of those tools is the Resilient Strategies Guides. This is an online questionnaire that acts as an introduction and onboarding for small or mid-sized utilities that may not have a vast knowledge of how climate change is impacting them, but which still want to work on it. After users identify who they are and where they are in the U.S., the guide walks them through various priorities that they might be concerned with. For example, those in the Southwest may be more concerned with drought, although some may also need to consider flooding and other risks. Meanwhile, those in northern regions may need to focus on warming-related risks. The guide provides a final report with priority recommendations, potentially vulnerable assets, and relevant strategies. It also offers case studies of what other utilities in their region have done, as well as financing advice and resources.

This report can then be used in CRWU’s next tool, called the Climate Resilience Evaluation and Awareness Tool (CREAT). This risk-assessment resource is designed to help utilities think through what the climate future will look like. Utilities can use EPA’s data or import their own. At the end of the process, CREAT provides a risk assessment report and suggests adaptation plans. It also includes a report on the potential cost of doing nothing.

The final tool Baranowski discussed was CRWU’s interactive climate change and weather maps. These maps curate data from a range of resources, including National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), to assemble various visual aids that can be used to assess climate risk and build resiliency plans. This includes storm surge inundation maps, climate scenario projection maps, streamflow projection maps, wildfire conditions and risk maps, and snowpack change maps.

CRWU also provides technical assistance through a variety of means. For example, it hosts three or four virtual meetings with climate scientists and engineers each year and will do onsite walk-throughs for individual utilities. Baranowski said CRWU did 50 in-person consultations in 2022 and is hoping to expand this effort in future years.

Dawn Ison of EPA’s preparedness and response branch closed out the webinar by discussing disaster preparedness and risk assessments. The EPA encourages utilities to prepare for any event that can cause a disruption, she told attendees, even those that aren’t required by federal, state, or local mandates. EPA launched a small utility resilience education program and provides certificates and continuing education units (CEUs) to those systems that create plans.

She went on to outline tools that utilities can access to help build emergency response plans (ERPs). These include ERP templates, incident action checklists, and mutual aid programs such as Water and Wastewater Agency Response Network (WARN). She also mentioned EPA’s Response on the Go (ROTG) app, which offers contact information, real-time radar information, and allows utilities to do an online damage assessment by uploading photos and other information. In addition, the Fed FUNDs tool can be used to identify eligible funding resources, such as Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and more based on utility size, type of disaster, and location.

Christian Bonawandt is an industrial content writer for Water Online. He has been writing about B2B technology and industrial processes for 22 years.