Why Water Districts Can No Longer Delay Climate Resilience Planning: Six Steps to Get Started

Extreme weather is no longer a future concern—it is a present operational reality. Rising temperatures are placing increasing strain on natural stormwater treatment systems. More frequent and intense storms are overwhelming drainage and conveyance systems. Prolonged droughts are forcing utilities to reassess long-standing assumptions about their current stormwater systems. Infrastructure designed for historical climate conditions is now being tested by a climate that no longer behaves as expected.

For stormwater utilities, the financial, operational and community safety consequences of delaying climate adaptation are growing. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, every dollar invested in community climate resilience can yield up to $13 in avoided losses.

Advanced climate modeling frameworks, such as the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 6 (CMIP6), provide global climate model outputs that enable assessment of future climate conditions under different emissions scenarios. This data can be used to analyze projected changes in variables such as temperature, precipitation, drought indicators and extreme heat. When combined with local asset and operations data, these projections can help utilities and communities identify system-specific risks with greater precision.

A comprehensive vulnerability assessment should extend beyond physical assets to include system-level operational risks. Comparing future climate projections to baseline conditions provides insight into where failures or flooding, due to inadequate conveyance, are most likely and most consequential. Rigorous cost-benefit analysis can then help decision-makers understand the risks of inaction and the value of targeted intervention.

Given finite resources, utilities must focus on actions that deliver the greatest risk reduction and return on investment. Effective resilience strategies typically combine stormwater infrastructure upgrades with nature-based solutions and technology enhancements, such as predictive and adaptive smart watershed implementations. Planning should address a full range of climate stressors, including drought, flooding, extreme temperatures and water quality impacts.

Successful climate resilience planning depends on collaboration across agencies, jurisdictions and communities. Early stakeholder engagement builds trust and accelerates implementation. Visual tools such as GIS-based dashboards can help translate complex climate data into accessible insights, enabling shared understanding and informed decision-making.

Climate resilience is an ongoing process, not a one-time initiative. Plans should include performance monitoring, periodic reassessment and built-in flexibility to incorporate updated climate data, emerging technologies and evolving community needs. Evaluating strategies across multiple climate scenarios helps identify solutions that remain effective under a wide range of future conditions.

Incorporating climate projections into design criteria for new or reconstructed systems can be a highly cost-effective resilience measure. This includes updating precipitation frequency curves to reflect future extreme rainfall projections, adjusting temperature assumptions for treatment processes, and accounting for sea-level rise in coastal systems. Designing for future conditions reduces the need for costly retrofits and extends asset life.

Moving Forward