Finance Committee Meeting 2007

• Board Meeting Date: 9/18/2007
• Description: Finance Sub-Committee Meeting September 18, 2007
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

Water Project Construction Program — Project Data
• Non-Reimbursable Investment
Applicant: Colorado Water Conservation Board
Project Name: Analysis of Climate Change Effects on Colorado Water Resources Study Project
County: Statewide Drainage Basin: Statewide Water Source: N/A
Total Project Cost: $100,000
Funding Sources: CWCB
Type of Applicant: State Agency Median Household Income:N/A
CWCB Investment: $100,000
SUMMARY
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
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