Over the coming months, EPA is offering several technical and resiliency resources to support county water utilities.
The EPA’s Creating Resilient Water Utilities (CRWU) initiative provides drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater (water sector) utilities with tools, training, and technical assistance needed to increase resilience to climate change.
CRWU promotes a clear understanding of climate change and helps to identify potential long-term adaptation options for decision-making related to implementation and infrastructure financing.
Climate Change Risk Assessment Technical Assistance
EPA’s CRWU initiative provides drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater (water sector) utility owners and operators with one-on-one, no-cost climate change risk assessment support using CRWU’s tools and resources, including its Resilient Strategies Guide, Climate Resilience Evaluation and Awareness Tool(CREAT), and Climate and Weather Data Maps.
Over the course of two to four months, water sector utilities will be guided through a risk assessment process to:
- Better understand their potential risk to climate change threats.
- Identify potential adaptive measures to become more resilient to those threats.
- Identify potential funding sources for implementation of those potential adaptive measures.
Apply to EPA CRWU’s technical assistance by August 15th, 2024, by emailing Aliza Furneaux (Furneaux.aliza@epa.gov).
Selected utilities will be notified in early September 2024. Scheduling of the technical assistance assessment will begin in late September/early October of 2024. EPA will assign selected utilities a start-date of either October 2024, or January, April or July 2025. Any additional applicants will be notified and waitlisted for the following assistance year, which begins October 2025.
Upcoming Infrastructure Investment Webinars
The Source Water Collaborative is hosting its 4th webinar as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) Webinar Series on May 30, 2024 from 2:30 – 4:00 PM ET titled Redefining “Disadvantaged Communities” in a New Water Infrastructure Era. This webinar will share how the SRF State Revolving Fund programs are given authority to determine what constitutes a “disadvantaged community” and how states have ensured their definitions bring about the most equitable outcome possible for this funding.
June 26th, 2024 | Infrastructure Funding for Water Reuse
The EPA’s Water Reuse Program is hosting a webinar on June 26, 2024 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. (Eastern time) on infrastructure funding for water reuse. Join the webinar to learn about how programs across the federal government can be used to fund water reuse projects. Presenters will be sharing information from the from US EPA, USDA, FEMA, and Bureau of Reclamation.
