Announcement for Water Sector Stakeholders
 |
|
Drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater (water sector) utilities, along with other water sector stakeholders, are eligible to receive free climate change risk assessment technical assistance from EPA’s Creating Resilient Water Utilities (CRWU) initiative. Through this technical assistance process, CRWU will assist approximately 75 water sector utilities / communities in identifying long-term climate change adaptation strategies, as well as potential funding options to implement adaptive measures. |
If you are, or know of, a water sector utility that would like to receive this free technical assistance opportunity, please indicate your interest via email to Aliza Furneaux (furneaux.aliza@epa.gov) no later than Friday, August 15, 2024.
EPA will notify the utilities chosen to receive technical assistance by early September, and will assign each utility an assessment start-date of either October 2024 or January, April, or July 2025. If you’d prefer technical assistance sooner than later, CRWU has a few opportunities to assist you now. In your email response, please indicate you are immediately ready to engage.
More details on the technical assistance process are provided below and if you’d like to see what other utilities have already done related to climate change risk assessment, visit EPA CRWU’s Adaptation Case Studies Map.
Technical Assistance Process
Using EPA CRWU’s Resilient Strategies Guide or Climate Resilience Evaluation and Awareness Tool, water sector utility owners and operators will be guided through a risk assessment process to:
-
Better understand potential risk from climate change threats;
-
Identify potential adaptive measures to become more resilient to those threats; and
-
Explore potential funding sources for implementation of those potential adaptive measures.
Recognizing partner utilities’ significant time constraints, EPA provides efficient technical assistance with substantial facilitation support. This opportunity requires the utility to dedicate approximately 35 to 40 hours, spread across two to four months, to the assessment process. Utilities typically designate a lead staff member to serve as a point-of-contact on the assessment. Additional utility staff and experts may be invited to contribute during certain meeting topics as well.
|
