Incorporating Climate Uncertainty in a Cost Assessment for New Municipal Source Water
Publication: Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 138, Issue 5
Abstract
Though new water supply source development has always required planning under many forms of uncertainty, climate change presents an added dimension that may exacerbate supply and water quality challenges. Hence, new decision-support tools are needed, and in this paper an approach that incorporates the uncertainty of climate variability and change into a cost assessment framework for a municipal drinking water provider in Colorado is developed and applied. The water utility provider is developing a new source of water supply, but treatment costs are relatively high because of the advanced processes needed to treat the water to desired standards. Furthermore, the new water source has variable salinity concentrations that are not removed by any of the implemented treatment processes, requiring blending with an existing lower salinity water source. This results in an increase in the finished water salinity (as compared with the existing water source), which can have negative impacts on customer satisfaction and the life span of water-using appliances. To plan for the development of this water supply source, an approach is proposed to assess the potential treatment and residential costs associated with the blending of the new water source with an existing source under climate uncertainty. Uncertainty from climate variability is captured through a previously developed stochastic streamflow and water quality simulation method that utilizes climate change scenarios. Results show that the proposed blend strategies incur increased treatment costs and economic impacts for customers. Specifically, a 30% reduction in annual flows from climate change translates into a 12% treatment cost increase and a 22% rise in residential costs.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge Water Research Foundation project 3132, “Incorporating climate change information in water utility planning: A collaborative, decision analytic approach,” the National Water Research Institute (NWRI) through a NWRI fellowship to the senior author, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency through a STAR fellowship to the senior author for partial financial support on this research effort. This publication was developed under a STAR Research Assistance Agreement No. F08C20433 awarded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It has not been formally reviewed by the EPA. The views expressed in this document are solely those of the authors and the EPA does not endorse any products or commercial services mentioned in this publication.
References
Bookman-Edmonston Engineering Inc. (1999). “Technical appendix 5: Economic impact.” Salinity management study final report: Long-term strategy and recommended action plan, Rep. for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Glendale, CA.
Bruvold, W. H., and Daniels, J. I. (1990). “Standards for mineral content in drinking water.” J. Am. Water Works Assoc., 82(2), 59–65.
Climate Change Science Program (CCSP). (2008). Best practice approaches for characterizing, communicating and incorporating scientific uncertainty in climate decision making, Morgan, G. et al., eds., National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Washington, DC.
Dessai, S., and Hulme, M. (2004). “Does climate adaptation policy need probabilities?” Clim. Pol., 4(2), 107–128.
Dessai, S., and Hulme, M. (2007). “Assessing the robustness of adaptation decisions to climate change uncertainties: A case study on water resources management in the east of England.” Global Environ. Change, 17(1), 59–72.
Gelman, A. (2004). Bayesian data analysis, 2nd Ed., Chapman & Hall/CRC, Boca Raton, FL.
Groves, D. G., Knopman, D., Lempert, R., Berry, S., and Wainfan, L. (2008a). Presenting uncertainty about climate change to water-resource managers: A summary of workshops with the Inland Empire Utilities Agency, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA.
Groves, D. G., and Lempert, R. J. (2007). “A new analytic method for finding policy-relevant scenarios.” Global Environ. Change, 17(1), 73–85.
Groves, D. G., Lempert, R., Knopman, D., and Berry, S. (2008b). Preparing for an uncertain future climate in the Inland Empire: Identifying robust water management strategies, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (2007). Climate change 2007: The physical science basis: Contribution of working group I to the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Solomon, S. et al., eds., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, NY.
Kenney, D. S., Goemans, C., Klein, R., Lowrey, J., and Reidy, K. (2008). “Residential water demand management: Lessons from Aurora, Colorado.” J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc., 44(1), 192–207.
Lall, U., and Sharma, A. (1996). “A nearest neighbor bootstrap for resampling hydrologic time series.” Water Resour. Res., 32(3), 679–693.
Lempert, R. J., Groves, D. G., Popper, S. W., and Bankes, S. C. (2006). “A general, analytic method for generating robust strategies and narrative scenarios.” Manage. Sci., 52(4), 514–528.
Lempert, R. J., Popper, S. W., and Bankes, S. C. (2003). Shaping the next one hundred years: New methods for quantitative, long-term policy analysis, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA.
Lempert, R. J., and Schlesinger, M. E. (2000). “Robust strategies for abating climate change.” Clim. Change, 45(3), 387–401.
Means, E., Laugier, M., Daw, J., Kaatz, L., and Waage, M. (2010). “Decision support planning methods: Incorporating climate change uncertainties into water planning.” 〈http://www.wucaonline.org/assets/pdf/actions_whitepaper_012110.pdf〉 (Apr. 17, 2010).
National Research Council (NRC). (2009). “Panel on strategies and methods for climate-related decision support, committee on the human dimensions of global change. Division of behavioral and social sciences and education.” Informing decisions in a changing climate, The National Academies Press, Washington, DC.
Nowak, K., Prairie, J., Rajagopalan, B., and Lall, U. (2010). “A nonparametric stochastic approach for multisite disaggregation of annual to daily streamflow.” Water Resour. Res., 46(8), W08529.
Pielke, R. A. et al. (2005). “Drought 2002 in Colorado: An unprecedented drought or a routine drought?” Pure Appl. Geophys., 162(8–9), 1455–1479.
Ray, A. J., Barsugli, J. J., and Averyt, K. B. (2008). Climate change in Colorado, Colorado Water Conservation Board, Denver, CO.
Risbey, J. S. (1998). “Sensitivities of water supply planning decisions to streamflow and climate scenario uncertainties.” Water Pol., 1(3), 321–340.
Towler, E. (2010). “Understanding and modeling the impacts of climate change on source water quality and utility planning.” Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO.
Wilby, R. L., and Dessai, S. (2010). “Robust adaptation to climate change.” Weather, 65(7), 180–185.
Woodbury, M., Yates, D., Baldo, M., and Kaatz, L. (2011). Front range climate change vulnerability group: A streamflow sensitivity study, Water Research Foundation, Denver, CO.
Yates, D., Purkey, D., Sieber, J., Huber-Lee, A., and Galbraith, H. (2005a). “WEAP21—A demand-, priority-, and preference-driven water planning model part 2: Aiding freshwater ecosystem service evaluation.” Water Int., 30(4), 501–512.
Yates, D., Sieber, J., Purkey, D., and Huber-Lee, A. (2005b). “WEAP21—A demand-, priority-, and preference-driven water planning model part 1: Model characteristics.” Water Int., 30(4), 487–500.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 138 • Issue 5 • September 2012
Pages: 396 - 402
Copyright
© 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 27, 2010
Accepted: Mar 4, 2011
Published online: Mar 7, 2011
Published in print: Sep 1, 2012
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.