On July 15, EPA announced that it had completed a series of updates to resources that are part of its Creating Resilient Water Utilities (CRWU) program. The updates include an additional 38 new strategies added to its Resilient Strategies Guide, a new case study of how one utility used CRWU resources to support assessments related to America’s Water Infrastructure Act (AWIA) compliance, and improvements made to the Storm Surge Inundation map.
Resilient Strategies Guide Update
EPA has expanded the content in its Resilient Strategies Guide to include an additional 38 new strategies. The new strategies are included in the Recovering with Resilience and Communicating with Public/Partners categories. The Guide helps drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater utilities progress through the resilience planning process, providing resources and suggestions to identify strategies that address their priorities and build resilience to current and potential hazards. At the end of the process the guide provides a final report summarizing their results and a file that can be used in CREAT, where these results are inputs for their risk assessment. Access the Guide at EPA.
EPA also notes it has updated the links between the Guide and its Water Finance Clearinghouse and Case Study and Information Exchange map to help those utilities ready to seek funding to pursue resilient strategies and read about the experiences of other utilities already taking action.
New Case Study
EPA describes how the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority (CFPUA) in Wilmington, North Carolina worked with CRWU resources to demonstrate how their robust, near-term risk assessments could be extended into longer-term assessments using the Climate Resilience Evaluation and Awareness Tool (CREAT). Starting with a focus on the risk and resilience assessment requirements of AWIA, CFPUA utilized the Vulnerability Self-Assessment Tool (VSAT) to identify and assess threats to their operations and infrastructure. These results were imported into the similar decision-support framework in CREAT, extending the definitions of the natural hazard threats and infrastructure planning horizons. The results of this work are highlighted on EPA’s Case Study and Information Exchange map, along with stories from over 45 utilities that have begun their work in building resilience and shared their experience for other utilities to use in their planning.
Storm Surge Inundation Map Improvements
EPA’s Storm Surge Inundation map has been updated to provide the most up-to-date information on past and current storms, all in one application. The historical data now includes 2019 storms and a new map was added to show current storm positions and watches/warnings from NOAA’s National Hurricane Center. This “real-time” map will also show projections of storm surge as the advisories are released, complementing the “worst-case” surge projections provided for planning purposes.
For utilities that wish to know more about CRWU resources, EPA also announced that it will convene a webinar about the program on Wednesday, July 29, from 1:00 – 2:00 pm ET. For more information and to attend, visit the webinar registration page at GoToWebinar.
