What Water Utilities Need To Know About Climate Adaptation
By Christian Bonawandt
No one knows more than water utilities how changing climate conditions are impacting the challenges and costs of delivering clean drinking water to communities they serve. In a recent episode of The Water Online Show, Jesse M. Keenan, a leading scholar on climate change and Associate Professor at Tulane University, and Edgar Westerhof, a climate adaptation expert from Arcadis, discussed the issue of resiliency for drinking water and wastewater systems. They insisted that a multi-faceted approach considers both physical and economic factors is essential. Both guests outlined a number of strategies that utilities can employ to help secure the future of their services against current and potential obstacles.
Physical Strategies
To build resilience, a utility’s first step is to protect its physical assets, which includes equipment, buildings, and water sources. Recommendations from the experts fell into four basic categories.
1. Plan for extremes. Westerhof advised utilities to design systems that can withstand events well beyond the norm, preparing for double or triple the anticipated heavy rainfall, and to understand potential impacts on communities. “If you think two inches is a big rainstorm, consider 20 inches and see what happens in your urban landscape. See how streets turn into rivers,” he said. In addition, Keenan suggested utilities develop a vast playbook of technical solutions, including culvert sizing for varying precipitation, handling greater sedimentation rates, adding extra power for pumps, and managing biomass during dry periods to ensure water flow. “It's about compound events, the relationship between floods and other dependent infrastructure systems like electricity and communications for instance,” he said.
2. Prepare for the future. Westerhof added that solutions should be identified 20 to 30 years in advance of when they are needed, while also considering how they will impact operations in the short term. At the same time, these plans must be holistic and regional, involving all stakeholders and promoting participatory planning rather than focusing solely on local, isolated interventions.
3. Address water scarcity. With viable drinking water sources running dry and megadroughts becoming the norm, the experts asserted that water utilities need to rethink the water cycle. This means increasing the amount of water reuse and desalination that makes up their water matrix. Keenan also suggested implementing and enforcing strict withdrawal permits, and in some cases, such as in Arizona, municipalities have halted new development in areas facing severe water scarcity.
3. Build efficient infrastructure. Utilizing building codes for water efficiency in both new construction and retrofitting existing buildings is “super simple” and highly effective, according to Keenan. He emphasized that updating fixtures to low-flow options “can reduce the standard water consumption by 40 to 50%.” Alongside this, Westerhof warned that the challenges posed by aging infrastructure in the U.S. water sector are “creeping up on us.” He added, “If you don't have your workforce in place to work on these challenges, you are not going to be in a good place.”
Economic Strategies
Of course, nothing in life is free, and the speakers discussed at length the potential economic impact of their solutions, as well as the consequences of inaction. According to some estimates, the U.S. could face an additional $50 billion in electricity production costs by 2050 due to growing demands for water recycling, desalination, and extending pumping distances for drinking water. Keenan agreed, citing the example that Miami-Dade County spends a significant portion of its budget — about 10% — on managing water. Beyond energy, Keenan added that physical impacts from extreme weather increases costs and reduces useful life. “We have greater O&M costs all along the way, which are increasing our unit costs for the production and processing of water, wastewater, and the like.”
Moreover, securing capital is becoming more expensive and difficult. “For municipalities and utilities that are in high-risk areas, the municipal bond market is imposing risks premium on these places,” said Keenan. Ultimately, he noted, these risk premiums mean, “Your interest rate just goes up and you pay more interest on your debts.” Investing in resilience, however, can provide a counter-narrative, Westerhoff explained.
He went on to say that utilities tend to wait until infrastructure is at the end of its life before investing in upgrades or repairs, and this needs to change. “We tend to invest when something literally is falling to pieces,” he said. “And that is not the right approach to resilience, planning, and adaptation. You need to be ahead of the curve. You need to understand your risk.”
To address these financial challenges, states must play a more active role in funding and investment. Keenan argued that, “At the end of the day, states are going to have to put up their own money into revolving loan funds. They’re also going to have to come up with pooled mechanisms, offer different lines of credit, and subcontract facilities to local governments and counties.”
He also noted that he anticipates a necessary reorganized scale of deployment for capital, which may lead to increased utility consolidation. In addition, with federal public assistance potentially shifting to a block grant program, smaller states might struggle with capacity, leading to a situation where “we're privatizing assets and we're socializing liabilities.”
Christian Bonawandt is an industrial content writer for Water Online. He has been writing about B2B technology and industrial processes for 24 years.