The Senate’s Climate Bill Must Support Water Adaptation

On Wednesday, Senators John Kerry and Barbara Boxer plan to unveil the Senate's version of climate change legislation, a counterpart to the bill that passed in the House of Representatives this past June. A lot of the attention surrounding the bill is focused on mitigating climate change - that is, minimizing global warming's effects by decreasing greenhouse gas emissions. However, the bill will also address the equally important issue of adaptation: the process of preparing for and coping with the adverse impacts of climate change that will occur even if we take action now to reduce global warming pollution.

As NRDC has reported before, America's water resources face serious threats from climate change, including long and frequent droughts, more intense storms and floods, and pollution from increased runoff, just to name a few. That's why it's so important for Congress to pass comprehensive climate change legislation this year, and also why it's so critical for the Senate climate bill to include provisions that help communities make their water resources strong and resilient enough to adapt to whatever changes come their way.

When the bill is introduced, we're hoping to see strong support for water-related adaptation efforts. Here are some of the particular things we're looking for: 

• We need climate legislation that provides funding and technical support for local water authorities who manage water resources to assist them in developing and implementing water adaptation strategies, plans, and projects. With the responsibility for communities' water resources in local authorities' hands, it's important that they get the resources they need to anticipate future difficulties. 
• Climate change will affect different regions in very different ways. While global warming may leave some areas with too little water, other areas may have more to fear from floods and heavy rains. Any adaptation provisions in the bill should provide flexibility for states and local governments to tailor their strategies to their specific water needs. A "one size fits all" solution simply won't work in addressing the wide-ranging effects climate change will have nationwide. 
• That being said, some strategies to deal with water issues have proved more effective than others. The Senate bill should provide incentives for implementing two cost-effective strategies that offer multiple benefits: water efficiency measures, which help conserve water and save energy at the same time, and "green infrastructure" (a.k.a "low impact development"), building practices that manage water resources by mimicking nature's own processes to retain, filter and store water through increased vegetation and porous materials (i.e. green roofs, tree boxes, permeable pavement). 
• And in order to help water resources adapt to climate change by staying healthy, the Senate bill must address the role agriculture plays in clean water. This legislation is a great opportunity to help farmers solve two problems at once: their businesses' impact on global warming and runoff pollution from their farms. Fortunately, these are two problems that have a lot of the same solutions. 
• Any strategy to adapt water resources to climate change will be more effective if multiple governing bodies work together. After all, a watershed - the geographic area that drains into one larger body of water through its rivers and streams - can span city borders and state lines. The federal legislation should encourage coordinated regional water planning approaches so that authorities in the same watershed work together to manage their water resources more effectively. 
• Of course, even though local governments play a major role in the water management process, federal government should take responsibility as well to ensure that water resources all across the country are ready to adapt to climate change. Accordingly, the bill should require the federal natural resources agencies - like EPA, NOAA, DOI, USDA, and the Army Corps of Engineers - to establish an advisory board and develop a national natural resources adaptation strategy evaluating the impacts of climate change on water and other resources. 

Impacts on water could be many Americans' most direct experience with the effects of climate change. No matter where your community is located, it will probably have to adapt its water management strategy in the months and years ahead to keep its water supply clean and abundant. We are looking to the Senate to show federal leadership on water adaptation strategies in their version of the climate bill, along with support for the local governments taking action, to help ensure strong and healthy water resources across the country and into the future.