Robert McCartney: Welcome to Think Regionally, a monthly podcast on important topics in the greater Washington area. Our sponsor is the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments or COG. I'm your host, Robert McCartney. The threat from climate change takes multiple forms. Given the area's geography and weather patterns, experts say that flooding poses some of the region's greatest challenges. It would result either from inland flooding caused by extreme rainfall as in 2020, or from a storm surge that causes the Potomac and some tributaries to overflow their banks. A nightmarish prospect would be a combination of both triggered by a hurricane that strikes the mouth of the Potomac at the Chesapeake Bay. The warming of the atmosphere poses other dangers as well. There's now a greater risk of severe winds that knock out electric power for days or weeks. Extreme heat endangers people's health, and while it may seem contradictory, given the worries about flooding, a changing climate also increases the possibility of a drought that could lead to water rationing. All of this has got the region's government's businesses and others working to strengthen our defenses against bouts of damaging weather. They're building storm ponds to collect runoff, planting more trees and planning to build new reservoirs. They want to create public shelters where people driven from their homes can find a bed, food and other services. Experts say these efforts aim to advance what's called climate resilience. They spring from a recognition that climate change is happening, so we must do more to adapt and deal with its effects. Here's Mark Nystrom, climate program manager at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority or WMATA, better known as Metro.

Mark Nystrom: The climate space has been really focused for the last 15 years, let's say, on greenhouse gas reductions. The side that I'm working on right now is like, "Okay, we have climate change. We've lost part of that battle and we've seen, we're going to possibly see temperatures at 1.5 degrees Celsius over the global average this year." There's a pretty high probability of that happening this year, and if not this year, next year. So climate resilience folks are working on the idea, "Look, we've already lost ground. How are we going to adapt to this new climate that we're living in?"

Robert McCartney: We'll hear more from Nystrom later. For now, let's listen to the start of my conversation with Kharkar of DC Water.

Robert McCartney: So Salil, thank you so much for doing this. Why don't you start by outlining some of the main threats that climate change poses to resilience of DC Water's operations. I'm thinking loss of electric, storm water, overflow, drought, all of the above. What are the threats, especially the ones that would affect DC Water's customers?

Salil Kharkar: I think you summarized it best by saying all of the above. The surges from the river is a known threat. Everybody knows about it, but it's the inland flooding from high intensity, short duration rainfalls and not being able to evacuate water out of the city. That's an equal threat. Power outages are always a concern. DC Water tries to build a very robust power grid system along with its partnership with Pepco so that a single [inaudible 00:04:37] does not take any of our major systems down. But power outages are a concern for sure. Drought is, we've not experienced a serious drought in this region, but with changes in the climate, nobody expected the Mississippi last year to run low and strand barge traffic. So that could occur as well.

Robert McCartney: To prevent acute rainstorms from creating swimming pools in our basements, a key is altering city and suburban landscapes to provide more places to channel excess water.

Salil Kharkar: Well, one of the things we are going to have to do is change how we look at urban design. The conventional models of having just storm sewers, you can never size something large enough for the rains that you may get sometime in the future. So we need to build something that's called blue-green infrastructure. And I know there's parts of Europe that are very advanced in adopting this. That's a multi-use infrastructure. For example, you could take a park, any park, which is great, but if you drop that park three to five feet down and sink it, it's still a park and it can still be used for its intended use. But under heavy rains, it then doubles as a storage, short term storage, and you need to look at urbanized areas and start building in short term storages across the areas.

Robert McCartney: In a Potomac flood, a top concern is protecting the Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant. That's the sprawling facility across the river from Alexandria that takes most of the areas' sewage, cleans it, and then pumps drinkable water into the Potomac.

Salil Kharkar: On the riverside, our biggest threat is a direct hit in the mouth of Chesapeake that pushes the water in front of that incoming storm. I joined DC Water in 2002, and the very next year we had Isabelle, and that was a storm surge that did enter into the plant. I have vivid memories of having an entire staff out there all night long putting sandbags to keep the water out. We were successful. It was quite an experience, but the storm surges are big concern along the Potomac.

Robert McCartney: Measures to protect Blue Plains accelerated after the damage caused along the East Coast by Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

Salil Kharkar: We started with the sandbags. Beyond the sandbags, we looked at something called bin blocks, which are bin concrete blocks, almost looked like jersey barriers, except they're designed to keep water back and you can stack them and the great interim measures, but you have to move them around when a storm is anticipated. So that was our interim solution, and recently we've got some funding and we started building a flood wall around DC, around Blue Plains, and that's a design for a 500-year flood plus [inaudible 00:07:36]

Robert McCartney: Those are steps to prepare for having too much water. But what about the opposite problem, drought? You mentioned the water got so low in the Mississippi that there wouldn't be, that they couldn't have barge traffic. We don't have barge traffic around here, so the risk would basically be we'd lose our main source of water, which is the Potomac.

Salil Kharkar: We would have reduced flow in the Potomac and we would definitely have to ration the water. So hopefully it doesn't come to that. But we also have two reservoirs on the Potomac, kind of managed by the Army Corps.

Robert McCartney: The Potomac River currently supplies around 78% of our region's water. Local governments, utilities and the federal government are actively exploring the possibility of procuring a secondary water source, such as a decommissioned quarry to be converted to a reservoir to ensure a safe and adequate water supply for the region. Now let's hear again from Nystrom of the Metro transit system. WMATA is studying how to guard against excess water flowing into subway stations and tunnels.

Mark Nystrom: The riverine and in-district flooding where the water pools in certain areas is a tremendous concern. Several stations that are vulnerable to that kind of flooding. For example, the Federal Triangle flooded a few years ago, and we have vents that are at surface level. That was how it was originally designed, and water can intrude into our tracks at that point.

Robert McCartney: So what kind of adaptations would you do in a specific station to anticipate, say, a hundred-year flood?

Mark Nystrom: Well, I think one of the things that have been identified, you might have noticed some vents around the mall area or around Federal Triangle where we have a lot of sandbags piled up. And we would love to raise those vents, bring them up a little higher so that we could prevent water intrusion into the system. But there's some concerns because again, we don't own the sidewalks that those vents are in. We don't own, we operate the mall. So there's a number of hurdles that need to be overcome before we can put in a new vent system.

Robert McCartney: A windstorm that knocked out electric power would cripple Metro subways. In the future, it would stall its buses as well because the latter are being converted to run on rechargeable electric batteries rather than diesel fuel.

Mark Nystrom: We rely heavily on electricity, we're the largest electricity user in the region. And so the resilience of our infrastructure, our grid is really important. There are redundant power supplies, so you have a transformer that leads one line in and then there would be another transformer from a different system as a backup. The idea would be if a transformer went down, we would have a redundant line in place to make up for that first one going down. And that way we do have battery packs in each of our power stations that, and each of the trains have really small battery packs. These don't get us very far, but they may have enough power to just ease us to the next station, or at least the next place that's safe to get people off of the train.

Robert McCartney: With more days forecast to have temperatures in the high nineties or above, WMATA is thinking about ways to keep people cool.

Mark Nystrom: We also are really concerned about how things like heat are going to impact not only our riders but our employees. We have a lot of people who are working outdoors, and so there really is a concern both from not only our infrastructure being damaged by extreme heat, but our passengers maybe being reluctant to access our facilities. A long walk down a sidewalk to our bus stop, we're going to have to adapt to that. So that might be coordinating and working alongside partners to ensure that the walkways are covered in trees, for example, and that there's sufficient shade at the bus stops, that we have the right infrastructure to ensure that the air conditioning in our stations continues to run.

Robert McCartney: As Nystrom previously mentioned, WMATA doesn't own the sidewalks, roadways, or other infrastructure adjacent to its stations or bus stops. This means Metro must collaborate with government agencies or other entities to carry out many of the projects aiming to increase climate resiliency. Nystrom hopes such cooperation can be accomplished in part through the new transportation resiliency working group of the Transportation Planning Board at COG.

Mark Nystrom: Well, so I think I'm really excited about participating in this COG group. I think the thing that the team here is doing that is so important is getting people like me from all these different organizations into the same room to just talk about what we're doing. I'm a bicycle and pedestrian most of the time, and so when I walk to the stations or bicycle to the stations, there needs to be good infrastructure for me to feel safe doing that. And so what that means is tree cover, that means bike lanes. It means making sure that crosswalks are well-marked and that there's traffic enforcement. And so by having us all in the same room, WMATA can share with our regional partners what some of our concerns are and what we're hearing from our customers about what's limiting their ability to ride transit. Because having that resilient transit system circles back around to that greenhouse gas reduction goals that everyone has. Getting people out of their cars and into transit is one of the best ways that you can reduce your greenhouse gases. Second thing is President Biden and the bipartisan infrastructure bill and then the Inflation Reduction Act included a lot of infrastructure dollars. Having the federal government help us work together and partner with other either transit agencies or other local governments to put in an application together, would make it, would even strengthen that application even more.

Robert McCartney: Finally, let's hear about a new kind of public private institution designed to coordinate and speed up efforts to increase safeguards against climate change and to maximize the resources available to do so. It's called a Resilience Authority and several have been set up in Maryland under a law passed in 2020. They're nonprofits that are established by a county or municipal government but are not under a government department. One in our region is in Charles County, headed by executive director Stacy Schaefer.

Stacy Schaefer: The broad public purpose is responding to the impacts of climate change, but the Resilience Authority really is empowered to do numerous things to assist in this effort. The Resilience Authority is empowered by statute to finance, manage, acquire, own property, convey property and support resilience infrastructure projects and take them on. So the projects, statutorily speaking, can range from anything from flood barriers to green spaces, building elevations to stormwater infrastructure. And we're also empowered to use innovative financing strategies, including those that leverage public and private investment, which is something that the government can't always do. So we are looking at federal grant opportunities, state grant opportunities. Charles County, of course, supports its Resilience Authority. We're also looking at private philanthropic foundations and also from the private sector.

Robert McCartney: Anne Arundel County has partnered with the city of Annapolis to create a Resilience Authority and Baltimore city is setting up one as well. For Schaefer, one focus will be on protecting the county's lengthy river banks against storm surges, preferably by restoring wetlands and other habitats that naturally moderate flooding. An additional goal is reducing agricultural runoff and other pollution that flows into the Chesapeake Bay.

Stacy Schaefer: Sea level rise is, of course, another threat. It causes erosion and a number of coastal flood hazards. Charles County has a great deal of coastal area. It's flanked by both the Potomac and the Patuxent. So in 2018, the county completed a comprehensive shoreline assessment and management plan, and they looked at both public and private properties along the Potomac River as well as all around Charles County where the Patuxent borders. And they identified and prioritized shorelines that are in need of restoration. And now they and the Resilience Authority were working together to implement the most effective shoreline projects that can both meet the Chesapeake Bay total maximum daily load goals for nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment and Resilience Authority is exploring living shoreline inhabit restoration to access federal funding to provide resilience.

Robert McCartney: So it's more a question of changing the habitat rather than say, building sea walls.

Stacy Schaefer: The best solution is one typically that involves natural restoration and letting nature do its job and absorb the wave action and storms.

Robert McCartney: Another innovation being studied around the region is creation of what are called resiliency hubs or public shelters to be set up in schools or other large buildings for use in a weather crisis. I asked Schaefer to describe them.

Stacy Schaefer: They would provide emergency services during extreme events, including offering the community a place to gather, to obtain information, receive emergency supplies. I could imagine storing and refrigerating medical supplies, receiving basic medical care, being able to charge your electric devices and access the internet.

Robert McCartney: Now, I'll share some of my own thoughts. Although it hasn't received much attention, our region and the rest of the nation are now fighting on a second front in the war against climate change. On the original front, we've been working to reduce emissions from fossil fuels and other sources of greenhouse gases. As I've discussed in earlier podcasts, council of governments and other area institutions are striving to build more charging stations in our region to support greater use of electric vehicles. They're encouraging more use of public transit, bicycling and creation of walkable communities. They're promoting construction of more eco-friendly buildings. This effort has had some success. The region reduced greenhouse gas emission by 24% between 2005 and 2020. That surpassed a target to cut them by 20% in that period. But of course, there's still a long way to go, partly because the rest of the country and the rest of the world haven't done as well. So while we have to continue our work to reduce emissions, indeed, we have to accelerate that work. We also have to fight on a second front by strengthening our protections against the severe storms fueled by the warming climate that we're already experiencing. The principle threat in our region is flooding. We need to redesign parts of our cities and suburbs partly to create more green spaces that can absorb excess water. We also must overhaul various parts of our infrastructure to prevent water intrusion at vital facilities. We need to improve safeguards against wind storms as well because they can cause electrical outages, and we need to protect against extended droughts. To find the resources to do all this, all the counties and municipalities in the region should set up resilience authorities similar to the one in Charles County, and they should set up resilience shelters to accommodate people, especially children and the elderly who might need housing in a storm. Local governments and institutions have a major role to play. They can put federal dollars and other funds into action and build consensus on how to upgrade infrastructure to weather the storms and keep communities safe. I hope you've enjoyed this podcast. We welcome your feedback. Please email comments to thinkregionally, one word, @mwcog.org. This podcast is produced by Lindsey Martin and Steve Kania. Look for our next one later this summer. This is your host Robert McCartney, urging everyone to think regionally.