Long-Term Planning

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Long-term planning is critical to many aspects of water utility management. Associated activities include managing long-term debt and asset values, maintaining infrastructure, ensuring that water supplies are sufficient to meet long-term demand, and increasing the sustainability of current water supplies. It is important that utility managers identify, characterize, and prioritize key threats and begin to devise response options that address the most salient risks.

In the past, long-term planning relied on historical climate data as a source of indicators for future climate conditions. Continuing this practice may result in misguided planning decisions because climate change will make historical information less useful as a basis for future projections. Water utility managers should devise long-term planning frameworks that address three basic components: forecasts of future water supplies, forecasts of future water demand, and forecasts of operating constraints. Assumptions about water supply serve to bound supply possibilities for the planning period. Demand assumptions should address major use categories such as municipal, agricultural, and in-stream. And finally, operational constraints address rules and event possibilities subject to the parameters of the overall climate regime. Planning forecasts should include climate change projections and contain a wide range of potential scenarios of climatic variability.

Long-term Planning – Miami-Dade Water Sewer Department In 2007, Miami-Dade County made a long-term commitment to incorporating climate change impacts into their planning by establishing the Climate Change Advisory Task Force (CCATF) to advise the city, and the water utility, about climate change. To date, the CCATF has made several recommendations to the Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Department about the location of future infrastructure to best mitigate SLR. Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Department is working to incorporate these recommendations into future long-term planning.

Long-term Planning – East Bay Municipal Utility District This utility began analyzing the potential impacts of climate change on water supply in 2004. In fact, the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) completed an analysis to inform its Water Supply Management Program 2040. This program identified and recommended a number of water utility projects that will help EBMUD meet its water supply needs during dry years through 2040. To successfully identify and develop these adaptation techniques, EBMUD incorporated the results of a number of climate change simulations and water resource modeling techniques into their long-term planning.

Long-Term Planning – Finland Finland has instituted a number of practices to encourage long-term planning focused on climate change adaptation. These activities include the development of an inter-connected network of water management utility companies, investments in projects that improve preparation for unique water quality scenarios associated with climate change, and expansion of water supply and sewer networks. (European Environmental Agency 2007)

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