California Special Districts interviewed General Manager Grant Davis and Government Affairs Manager Brad Sherwood of Sonoma Water.
Please explain the Advanced Quantitative Precipitation Information (AQPI) project?
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Advanced Quantitative Precipitation Information (AQPI) project represents efforts to install and expand radars throughout the San Francisco Bay Area to get more precise and accurate precipitation information. It is designed to aid emergency responders, school districts, transportation corridors, water managers and sanitation managers to know when a great deal of rain is going to fall on their area.
The information includes the amount of rain, the time it will fall, and how to respond to that extreme weather. The AQPI program is funded by a $19 million grant from the Department of Water Resources.
Do you see the AQPI as something that can benefit special districts other than water districts? Is there a goal to expand the system statewide?Absolutely yes, we are in the process of establishing radar locations throughout the Bay Area. The Santa Clara Valley Water District has a radar up and running on their facilities. Sonoma Water is in the process of securing a radar in Sonoma County. We will be establishing radars off the Sonoma coast, the East Bay and further down the peninsula.
It’s designed to better prepare the entire Bay Area, including special districts, but especially emergency and first responders, fire departments, public health entities, school districts, and anyone making decisions based on what the weather patterns are going to be in the next hour or days ahead. AQPI will provide a much better prediction of what to expect so decisions can be made to keep people safe and out of harm’s way.
This wasn’t your first step toward adapting to climate change; can you tell us about your comprehensive climate vulnerability assessment featured in the August 2017 Little Hoover Commission report on special districts?The climate vulnerability assessment is a little over $800,000 invested by Sonoma Water and our contractors into an assessment of our facilities. Sonoma Water is a wholesaler to over 600,000 customers in Sonoma and Marin Counties, but we also have responsibilities for eight sanitation districts and zones, as well as flood management of over hundred miles of engineered and natural channels.
It made sense for us to be looking at our vulnerabilities in all three of those areas. We have gone over prioritization of potential threats to the system, to climate change and extreme weather events. Jacobs Engineering is the lead contractor on this for us and are making tremendous progress already looking into our most vulnerable assets and potential types of initiatives that need to take place over the years to secure these types of facilities.
How would you recommend special districts consider the long-term needs of climate adaptation when developing capital infrastructure plans, master plans, and other relevant documents?It very much depends on what special district it is and what their responsibilities are. The approach I would recommend with any utility or special district is to take a look at the recent climate models produced by Dan Cayan at SCRIPPS Institute of Oceanography in San Diego. It describes a range of possible climate scenarios that we may encounter over next 10 to 100 years and how to plan accordingly. Design your built infrastructure with a changing climate in mind. Plan on our weather patterns changing and consider climate vulnerability.
We also recommend that special districts look at their emergency staffing centers and plan on back up personnel. If you do have a natural disaster in your special district jurisdiction, the probability of your staff being impacted is great. Ensure you have redundancy in your staffing plan, infrastructure and back-up generators – this will be crucial in those first few hours of an emergency. This should all be included in your resiliency planning and climate change planning.
If a special district is starting from scratch in terms of climate change adaptation, and has little bandwidth, what would be one simple short-term step to take? How about one reasonable long-term goal to shoot for?If there are already existing relationships that you can build from, if you are working on joint projects that span water supplies, transportation corridors, or are working through existing associations that deal with multiple benefits, start there. Most communities have been asked to consider their vulnerability as the weather is changing. This year, Northern California has gone through the wettest year on record, and the second on record for flooding in southern California two years ago – this is after five years of drought. Managers need to plan for more variability, begin putting infrastructure in place to be able to withstand that vulnerability, and start taking a more proactive approach. Whether it is a special district, county, city, or an association with a region, it is very important that they begin getting the best available science and pulling in available information to begin better planning and coordination.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?Your organization, California Special District Association, is worth joining. It is important for special districts to be a part of policy debate and implementation of successful strategies. Conferences are a good way to stay up to date and informed. On behalf of Sonoma Water as a long-time member, we look forward to building our partnership with other special districts who are responding to the same challenges. Whether you are a smaller rural community or a larger urban metropolis, we all have issues that will need to be addressed over time and the more we can learn together the better.
What has your district done to step up public engagement on climate adaptation, and inform and support people and businesses to take actions that increase their individual and community-wide defenses? What more do you think special districts can do in this regard?At Sonoma Water, we are fortunate that our Board of Directors for the water district are also the Board of Supervisors who are already involved with public health, safety, and energy in addition to water and wastewater, so they have a more integrated approach. With science continuing to show the models of weather patterns becoming more extreme, it is enough to support more proactive planning and putting projects on the ground that will help the broader community.
We are working with the Forecast Informed Reservoir Operations (FIRO); this is a broad collaboration that is working with SCRIPPS, Bureau of Reclamation, US Army Corps of Engineers, USGS, Department of Water Resources and our local partners to better understand the phenomenon of atmospheric rivers. Atmospheric rivers come from the west, hit the coast of California, and are responsible for the majority of our flooding. The lack of atmospheric rivers is also responsible for much of our droughts. Understanding this phenomenon is critical for water, wastewater, and other emergency response personnel in the years to come. We are working in a collaborate process on this and working on better managing our reservoirs using FIRO; it is real time data that can be used to base decisions on what is actually happening in the atmosphere.
Sonoma Water has also helped to develop the RCPA, the Regional Climate Protection Authority. Years ago, utilizing state law and created under Sonoma County Transportation Authority, we built a body that would be inclusive of our board of directors as well as each city’s elected representation on that governance structure to better plan for and respond to increasing vulnerability. These are the types of things Sonoma Water is continuing to pursue. We have also proven that you can deliver your water carbon-free. We are proud of these achievements and this can help other general managers of special districts to make the decision to do more and secure their systems.
How has your Integrated Regional Water Management Plan helped your district and other local agencies partner and maximize climate adaptation resources and benefits?The radar project grant, AQPI, was born out of an integrated regional water management plan, specifically the San Francisco/Bay Area IRWM Plan, which was funded by $19 million dollars from DWR three years ago. Here at Sonoma Water, we have integrated the IRWM planning process into climate adaptation planning. We are now looking at pushing resource resilience. IRWM helped create a collaborative regional team of local government to help implement a plan to put projects on the ground for the state. This has been expanding into other areas of resource resilience with extreme weather or cause and effect of extreme weather, such as fires. We are working on and foresee a future where local governments and regional governments are working together to secure funding for immediate needs related to extreme weather, cause and effect, protection of our resources, property and life. IRWM is like the foundation of a house we are trying to rebuild after a fire; we are looking to utilize IRWM to make something better, stronger and more resilient for the future. Without a doubt, we are strong supporters of local regional collaboration. I think there are others like us in the special district world who have seen, been through or responded to extreme weather events such as wild fires.
What other regional partnerships has your district participated in concerning climate adaption?There are a couple very successful ones. The first is the North Coast Resource Partnership (NRCP) that is another integrated water management outgrowth. It includes the seven counties north of Sonoma up to the Oregon border. This group is dedicated toward responding to communities that are often neglected. It includes two supervisors from each county on the policy review panel, as well as staff such as general managers, engineers and biologist on the technical review panel. They work together to better manage our resources, better respond to and ultimately, better adapt to climate change. A second regional partnership we are involved with is the Local Government Commission which has been active and continues to promote this resource area. At the local level, we have our own regional climate protection authority. We also are members of the Bay Area Climate Adaption Network that is continually to grow and evolve.