United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
Preparing for Extreme Weather Events:
Workshop Planner for the Water Sector
Recently the U.S. has experienced a number of extreme events from heavy precipitation and
flooding events to long periods of drought, wildfires, and winter storms. According to NOAA, the
U.S. saw more billion dollar weather disasters in 2011 than any other year, and it's expected that
these events will become more frequent and more intense in the future. Is your drinking water
or wastewater utility prepared?
EPA's Preparing for Extreme Weather Events: Workshop Planner for
the Water Sector helps drinking water, wastewater and stormwater
utilities prepare for extreme events by providing materials needed to
plan, facilitate and conduct an adaptation planning workshop.
After choosing a scenario, users are guided through five
development steps (pictured below), customizing provided
templates to develop a workshop that fits their utility, objectives and
audience. The Workshop Planner takes the guesswork out of the
design process, allowing a user to successfully conduct and facilitate
a workshop without outside assistance. These workshops create a
forum to openly discuss extreme event adaptation while bringing
utility and community partners together.
What is an extreme event?
An extreme event is any event outside of a
utility's normal planning threshold. For
example, this could be a drought longer than
the drought on record, or a 100-year
flooding event. Researchers project that the
probability of these storms will increase and
could occur every 3-20 years. A utility in
Waynesboro, TN has had two 100-year
floods and a 500-year flood since 2003.
Previously, they have not experienced a
flooding event since the 1960s.
1. Develop
Objectives
2. Invite
Participants
3. Identify
Logistics
4. Customize
Materials
5. Prepare
Report
Why invite outside stakeholders to your
workshop?
The entire community will be impacted by
extreme weather events, especially if
those events result in a service
interruption. Utilities should consider
inviting community partners to ensure a
robust discussion and to explore
collaborative adaptation partnerships.
These individuals could include watershed
managers, land use planners, and local and
state government representatives.
All of the materials included on the Workshop Planner are
customizable and are structured to allow the audience to:
• Understand the connection between climate change and
extreme events,
• Learn the adaptation planning process,
• Discuss the potential impacts to the utility from more frequent
and intense extreme events,
• Determine how potential adaptation options could be
implemented in a utility or community and
• Develop actions that can be taken immediately to become
better prepared for and more resilient to extreme events.
The following five extreme event scenarios are included; scenarios can be easily modified or combined:
Floods Drought Sea Level Rise Wildfires Reduced Snowpack
Download the Workshop Planner at http://www.ei3a.aov/climatereadvutilities
Email CRWUhelp@ei3a.aov with questions or feedback.
Office of Water (4608-T) | EPA 817-F-13-001 | February 2013 | http://www.epa.qov/watersecuritv
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