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Construction Fund 2008-2009 Non-Reimbursable Project Application PART B #4 Analysis of Climate Change Effects on Colorado Water Resources Study Project Please provide a brief narrative description of the proposed study or demonstration project including purpose, need, and service area. According to the June 2006 Western Governor's Association Report entitled, "Water Needs and Strategies for a Sustainable Future" recommended that while recognizing the uncertainties inherent in climate prediction, efforts should be made to focus on vulnerabilities and building increased resiliency to climactic extremes. Efforts should include improved data collection, improved prediction, modeling, and impact assessment. States should assume a greater role in assessing historical, current, and projected climate trends and relate these to potential changes in water supply, in order to prepare for and mitigate the impact from climate change and variability. States should include the analysis of climate change scenarios and coordinate more proactively and broadly with local governments and water users in their climate change planning efforts. The American Water Works Association Research Foundation's and the National Center for Atmospheric Research's 2006 publication entitled, "Climate Change and Water Resources: A Primer for Municipal Water Providers" states that in order to plan efficiently, it is important to understand how and why climate may change in the future and how that may affect the resources upon which the water utility industry depends. The Climate Change Effects on Colorado Water Resources Study Project will include the following activities to achieve a two-pronged approach in collaboration and partnership with other federal, state, and local entities engaged in assessing water adaptation strategies to address climate change: • Explore, compare, and contrast future climate scenarios to be used at the regional level • Assist in ongoing efforts to superimpose those potential changes on water resource systems to assess system reliability • Participate in ongoing efforts currently underway by federal agencies, and large water providers in the State, such as Denver Water, Colorado Springs Utilities, and Boulder, to develop appropriate hydrologic models • Identify the mechanisms necessary for such hydrologic modeling to be fully integratable in the State's Decision Support Systems • Analyze how potentially altered streamflow patterns affect water supplies based on new and different call patterns • Assist water users in their efforts to identify their most critical vulnerabilities, articulate the causes for those vulnerabilities and provide technical assistance • Assist water users to analyze how climate change and vulnerability, and climate extremes might exacerbate those vulnerabilities • Collaborate with federal, state, and local water provider efforts to design an analytic process to better address and solve the vulnerability in the face of climate uncertainty including but not limited to selection and application of baseline and scenario data including the development of alternative time series datasets of important variables such as daily or monthly precipitation, temperature, wind speed, and socio-economic scenarios of population change • Provide assistance to water provider in developing a method of decision analysis to narrow in on optimal options for adapting to climate change and variability While several of Colorado's larger water providers are currently engaged in proactive climate change/adaptive management studies, many mid-size and the majority of the smaller providers lack the tools and resources to begin these analysis. Every effort will be made to leverage to the maximum extent possible appropriated funds for this project to optimize the benefits to as many water users around the State that are working on or contemplating integrating climate change impacts on their system reliability.