{"id":1024,"date":"2023-03-15T13:16:34","date_gmt":"2023-03-15T17:16:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/councilgreatlakesregion.org\/2023\/03\/15\/climate-change-preparedness-of-great-lakes-communities-regulatory-permits-community-planning-are-based-on-outdated-precipitation-data\/"},"modified":"2024-11-16T14:04:46","modified_gmt":"2024-11-16T19:04:46","slug":"climate-change-preparedness-of-great-lakes-communities-regulatory-permits-community-planning-are-based-on-outdated-precipitation-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/councilgreatlakesregion.org\/climate-change-preparedness-of-great-lakes-communities-regulatory-permits-community-planning-are-based-on-outdated-precipitation-data\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate Change Preparedness of Great Lakes Communities: Regulatory Permits & Community Planning are Based on Outdated Precipitation Data"},"content":{"rendered":"

The below is taken from the Executive Summary of the <\/i>report <\/i><\/a>\u201cClimate Change Preparedness of Great Lakes Communities\u201d, an evaluation of whether regulatory permits and community planning efforts are current and aligned to manage climate change-driven increases in rainfall.<\/i><\/p>\n

Changing rainfall amounts across five cities in the Great Lakes region were examined to understand whether the regulatory permits and community planning efforts are aligned with robust and current rainfall estimates. Rainfall amount is a key factor considered in stormwater and sewer infrastructure design and dictates the cost of infrastructure as well as its performance. Over the last few decades, agencies and jurisdictions responsible for infrastructure, including storm and combined sewer infrastructure (much of which was constructed decades ago) have anecdotally reported that event precipitation amounts (\u201cPrecipitation Frequency Estimates\u201d or PFEs) have increased significantly. <\/p>\n

Cities across the region have suffered accordingly. Detroit, for example, suffered massive flooding in 2014, 2016, 2019, and 2021, causing economic, environmental, psychological, public health, and financial hardship on residents and businesses. Further, these floods damaged public facilities, museums, and schools across the city. These trends are unfortunately not unique to Detroit, and rampant flooding is now a common occurrence across Great Lakes cities. Finally, forecasts of future event precipitation amounts are significantly more than what they are today, suggesting the impacts of storms and the resulting damages will continue to get worse.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This report\u2019s focus is on Milwaukee (Wisconsin), Chicago (Illinois), Detroit (Michigan), South Bend (Indiana), and Buffalo (New York). For the purposes of analyses, the specific geography for each metro area was defined by the service area of their respective water\/wastewater utility\/agency. <\/p>\n

Among our findings, all five wastewater facilities were issued their permits well before the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Illinois State Water Survey (ISWS) published their most recent precipitation estimates. In other words, wastewater systems were designed to meet past climate trends. While some agencies now require designs based on more recent precipitation estimates, system-wide investments and updates take time and many systems no longer have capacity to meet the needs of our current climate.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Our analyses also found that in most locations, there is little change in the 10-year PFE from historical (1961) to current (2019-2020 timeframe), except in the Chicago region that shows a dramatically large change from the 1961 data. In all cases, the 100-year PFE increased, with increases varying from 11% more rain in Milwaukee to 50% increase in Chicago (Tables 1 through 4).\u00a0<\/p>\n

So far as future projections, for the mid- (and late-) century estimates, both the 10-year and 100-year PFE are expected to increase over the current values. For 10-year events:<\/p>\n