enough water it is too much water it is californians battling to protect their homes from drought filled wildfires it is midwest communities sandbagging levees to hold back the  floodwaters it is public health officials protecting the elderly from dangerous heat waves it is water utilities trying to provide drinking water for a growing population it is farmers trying to cope with not enough water or too much water certainly floods droughts and heat waves have always occurred but by loading up the atmosphere with global warming pollution we are loading up mother nature's dice for more extreme weather as global warming pollution increases we are rewriting the book on the planet's weather and climate in the latest eye opening reports from the united states climate change science program scientists are predicting increases in heat waves extreme rain and drought and if we do nothing to change the course of these events we may not like the way this story end thankfully this story is not finished we can still choose how it ends we must take action now to protect the most vulnerable amongst us from these extreme weather events and there are solutions  today we will hear from a panel of experts who understand the extreme weather challenges our nation will face but are also actively working toward solutions to these challenges their testimony today will guide us toward increasing our resilience to extreme weather but we cannot simply treat the symptoms and fail to address the underlying sickness as we increase our nation's resilience to extreme weather we must also dramatically reduce our global warming pollution even with the best preparation we have too many examples that point to our limited ability to cope with extreme weather we need to look no further than the recurring annual death toll from heat waves or to the wildfires that burn millions of acres every year in the west or to the cities that struggle to provide water for their growing populations for their agriculture or for their hydroelectric power production at the same time extreme precipitation has caused the current devastation in the midwest perhaps no weather disaster highlights or weakness to climate challenges than our inadequate response hurricane katrina which still haunts us several years later today we have several students in the room who have seen the devastation of extreme weather and our nation's failure to cope with this devastation firsthand these participants in the southeast climate witness program were all displaced by hurricane katrina and are now studying the vulnerability of their regions to future storms and climate change we thank them for their work and for coming to this hearing today they illustrate that climate change is not just an environmental or economic issue but it has impacts on real people and their communities global warming will push weather outside the range of what we used to know as normal this also means that old methods of water protection will no longer be sufficient to meet the climate challenges for the future we must protect society's most vulnerable people from the impacts we can no longer avoid while reducing global warming pollution to avoid a climate crisis it is time for this congress to write climate legislation that will ensure that the next chapter of our chairman i heard the imperative of my distinguished chairman from massachusetts that we have to write this legislation as i recall reading his press releases and that of the majority party that was supposed to be passed by july  th of last year and we still don't have anything on the calendar all that said severe weather has imparted humanity since our earliest memories just ask noah floods droughts hurricanes tornados and other natural disasters are something we humans have been learning to adapt to throughout time last month i saw firsthand the effects of severe weather wisconsin was among the states hard hit by floods that wreaked havoc through much of the midwest thirty wisconsin counties were declared disaster areas including all five in my district the county of waukesha suffered ninety dollars million in damages and many people were homeless because of the flooding wisconsin has seen many floods and they often come with summer rains for better or for worse it is part of my state's natural meteorological cycle and while flood waters can't always be stopped there are ways that people can adapt to these cycles and mitigate the damage and harm caused by them through technology planning and management there are things we can do to adapt to weather extremes and if the scientific forecasts are correct we will have to adapt projections show that no cut in greenhouse gasses no matter how steep can stop some warming over the next decade that is why i believe adaptation should be a high priority in confronting climate change while wisconsin was recently overflowing in water other parts of the country had precious little and management of these resources will become more important if the temperature continues to rise one of our witnesses today dan keppen of the family farm alliance says farmers in the west are already preparing to adapt to a warmer climate his testimony will also point out the need for a balance of both water conservation and supply enhancement a streamlined regulatory process that helps the development of new infrastructure and a prioritization of research needs i agree and welcome him and all of the witnesses here today in discussing priorities m pointed out that in california some have projected it will take two point five trillion gallons or two thousand five hundred billion gallons of water to produce that state's goal of a billion gallons of ethanol here is another reason to oppose this wasteful fuel subsidy and the mandates which were quadrupled in last year's energy bill these mandates and subsidies are already driving up the cost of food and doing nothing to drive down the cost of gasoline this is a waste of water and we are going to be paying for this micromanagement of this part of our economy for years to come if we don't wake up and see the problems that it causes adapting to climate change in severe weather will require balance coordination and prioritization through these methods we can sometimes help prevent or often worsen the sting of these weather events just a couple comments you know i come from washington state we got a little rain up in washington state and people don't think washington state is sort of an epicenter of extreme events we don't have many tornados or hurricanes but last year we had a rain event that for the first time in one hundred and thirty five years closed mount rainier national park and literally destroyed a lot of the places i had grown up with really really beautiful places  place called sourdough mountain last summer and right in the middle of coming down this mountain is this huge gash about sixty feet deep it looks like somebody took a giant knife and just cut a big gash down this mountain where this little teeny tiny creek had absolutely insane in this incredible rain event and that kind of rain event is completely consistent with more frequent rain events of more intense duration that we expect to see in the future no one can say specifically that that rain event was a with global warming the science does not allow that but it is something we expect and the reason i mention that is that when people talk about these events that mountain sourdough mountain had been there for a long long time there weren't gashes like that on that mountain at least during my lifetime and i  just mention it because this is something that hits places even with mild weather like the state of washington which has the mildest dampest grayest environment in the country the second thing i want to say is that when we think of extreme weather events are thinking of extreme in the human sense but there are extreme weather events that can cause enormous differences in the world that are just like a half a degree the very small changes of just a few degrees in the arctic are totally changing the entire ecosystem of the arctic the arctic ice cap is predicted to be gone in toto by late summer within the next several decades and there is some indication that this year could see an eighty percent or plus reduction of the arctic summer ice cap this year and there was a seventy or eighty percent reduction last year which shocked the scientific community the point i want to make is that relatively small we wouldn't chairman for holding this hearing i would like to begin by welcoming doctor jay golden of my home state of arizona to the committee doctor golden is working on a number of exciting projects at arizona state university dealing with innovative renewable energy generating technologies and energy reducing materials and surface treatments among other things i look forward to the testimony of doctor golden as well as to that of the other members examining the effects of a warming climate regardless of what is ultimately determined to be the cause of that warming is important to our country and very important to my state of arizona and to my city of phoenix which sits in a very warm portion of the nation and is affected and i think is a great example of a heat island i think it is critically important for us at both the local state and national level to identify how these events are brought about and how to handle the impacts of these weather related phenomena as a young boy growing up in arizona i can remember the summer weather which would always bring storms to the valley from the southeast it was called the monsoon season and they would bring huge dust storms north and in those days the storms would move all the way through the city of phoenix and pass on to the northwest this is the exact opposite of the weather pattern we have in the wintertime when our storms would come from the northwest and move to the southeast interestingly over my lifetime as phoenix has become a much bigger and bigger city with miles and miles square mile after square mile of concrete and asphalt and tall concrete and glass buildings i believe we have seen a tremendous impact of what i would call the heat island effect and now almost none of those storms make their way all the way through the valley  and emerge on the other side they tend to hit the valley and go out around it i am personally fascinated at how much modern building materials affect that urban environment and can affect these issues and i think it is very important for us to know how to adapt various building materials to accommodate that maybe not to have the heat island effect be as extreme and also various insulating materials we all know that for a long time in this country landlords would build large commercial buildings without properly insulating them or thinking about their energy footprint recognizing they were going to pass on the bill for the operation of that building to somebody else so i think this is important and while we cannot play god and control the weather we can certainly adapt to it as we have for hundreds of thousands of years  california either by lightning or by human activity what we need to look at i believe is that we as humans have created a lot of our own problems and we as humans have to then create solutions to those problems so i am hoping we will hear from our witnesses today that they can help us address this issue i am very concerned because even in a community like long beach which is not too far away from where i live they are expecting to see that there will be a big dip in their water  tables there providing millions of water for individuals but that is slowly dipping to almost thirty percent so these are dramatic events that are taking place in southern california last year at this time we had severe fires fire storms we are not even in that period right now in california where the santa ana winds are whipping up that is going to happen later on after august and september and we know that we are really overutilizing our resources and we have to you for the hearing and i want to welcome our witnesses and thank them for coming before us to talk about extreme weather and global warming and everyone agrees that extreme precipitation events are on the rise but the question for many of us is is this a trend or is it just natural a natural occurrence and mister chairman i have two articles that were published in water resources research found that the intensity levels were high in some years and low in others and a significant increase in the number of thunder days but they concluded that there was nothing unusual about the recent trends and i look forward to hearing from you all on these the trends could not be attributed to global warming and most increases weren't due to climate change instead the changes actually stemmed from new observational practices that caused artificial trends in climate data and we also have some research on the tree ring from their international conference and we are looking forward to covering that with you and hearing from you on these issues again we want to make certain that drought heat and excessive fires massive fires people who live in the district are breathing smoke in one hundred and ten degree weather so there is a lot of concern about the future what that means this sort of  is consistent with what i believe global warming will bring california is deserts claiming territory farther and farther north how is that going to manifest it is going to manifest by fires and it is going to manifest by heat and drought so am concerned and i want to see that we take the right steps and part of that is understanding exactly what the experts believe is in store for us so that we can not only prepare we can mitigate we can holding this hearing i want to join in here in terms of what climate change may mean for those of us from the west and i think my colleagues from california spoke of the fires that they are unfortunately experiencing and oregon usually follows california in the fire wave of the season and i think the two things that come to mind are first of all we know from research data and testimony from the forest service that our forests are going to be really impacted if it gets hotter and drier  drought as you all have talked about then you are going to have more bug infestation disease and forest fires and our forest fire officials have come to me and both firefighting officials and forest supervisors have said give us the authority you gave us in the healthy for restoration act which has worked well around our wildland urban interfaces let us do that out in the condition class two and three lands that are most out of whack with balance and nature so we can get ahead of this a bit get those forests thinned so that they can be more adaptive to the change in climate and be able to exist the wildfire that we know will come because it will be thinned out you won't have the ladder fuels and therefore fire will act like it used to act before we suppressed fire secondly the issue that i think that we all in the west especially the arid west  need to be cognizant of is that if it is going to be drier then we need to look at how we manage water and especially how we store water because if the snow packs do recede although this year we seem to have had an abundance of snow which was nice especially for those of us who are skiers but if we are going to see a reduction in snow pack then we need to focus on how you do off stream storage how you do additional storage of water and how we allocate that in an appropriate way how we best manage our water we are going to get some great testimony i think today from dan keppen who i will introduce later on this topic and on others so i think there are things that congress could do to change the law that would help on water management storage forest health and survivability of our forest reducing greenhouse gas emissions and reducing the threat state university a recognized excellence center in higher education and i have relied on them many times this year for expertise and advice on issues confronting the congress i am pleased to welcome as i mentioned earlier today doctor jay s golden  doctor golden has a wide background not just from academia he has served as an environmental crimes detective he served as regional operations vice president for a fortune five hundred company he established his own multi state environmental and engineering firm and then returned and received his ph d in engineering from the university of cambridge and a master's degree in environmental engineering and sustainable development from the cambridge mit institute he currently serves as an assistant professor in the school of sustainability an affiliate of the civil and environmental engineering department at arizona state university he founded and serves as the director of the national center of excellence on smart innovations for urban climate and energy his research is focused on the climate energy nexus including quantifying and developing mitigation strategies that address the resulting environmental human health energy and economic impacts he was appointed to the united nations life cycle management task force and finally he directs the y and risk associated with extreme weather events we focus on heat waves the urban heat island effect and the relationship to reliable electricity delivery first allow me to present some driving factors behind our research and why i believe greater federal action needs to be taken to support state regional and local governments as they seek to protect our national security factor number one is more people in the united states die from heat related events than all other weather related phenomena combined that is more americans die each year from extreme heat  n lightning hurricanes tornadoes and floods combined factor number two global climate change which will increase human health vulnerability as more frequent and extreme weather events including heat waves impact our country in their two thousand and eight report the u s climate change science program concluded that abnormally hot days and nights and heat waves are very likely to be more frequent additionally since the record hot year of one thousand nine hundred and ninety eight six of the last ten years have had annual average temperatures that fall in the hottest ten percent of all years recorded in history for the u states factor number three is the urban heat island effect over half of our planet's population now lives in cities up thirty percent from fifty years ago in two thousand more than eight out of ten americans lived in metropolitan areas with increased population comes rapid arizona have increased three point one degrees fahrenheit during the th century however mean annual temperatures in just the urban portions of our region have increased seven point six degrees fahrenheit factor four a vulnerable electrical system rising demand an equivalent to almost nine hundred and fifty new power plants of three hundred megawatts each will be needed the primary means of adaptation to climate change is mechanical cooling air conditioning the greater the demand the more fragile our system becomes as older units  mechanical breakdowns and its heavily laden power lines stretch and sag from heat my recommendations action number one develop a stronger and more integrated urban research focus because no one mission agency in the federal government has  responsibility for all the components of a city no government body is funding research that looks at how all the parts fit together who will synthesize all this information to a model or models that incorporate as much data as possible fundamentally congress should direct agencies and the  c to look for ways to create synergistic urban research programs number two a dedicated urban satellite system remote sensing from space can and needs to play a vital role in protecting human health and the environment from climate change urban heat islands and failures of electrical power systems scientists continue to develop and refine very complex predictive models to gain a greater understanding of urban and global climate change however the current dedicated satellite system that provides the basis for our ability to prevent human harmful impacts is in jeopardy of phase out abandonment andor failure action item number three streamline and enhance electricity interruption reporting requirements we lack an effective and consistent national level program that examines interactions of the built environment climate and safe electricity delivery for our cities let alone an effective way to track outages at best our current system can be considered confusing and less than adequate we need to increase our understanding of electricity out of different scales in short we need a new comprehensive and rational power outage reporting system finally i strongly urge this committee and congress to support the development of a report to all appropriate committees of congress on the issues of heat waves urban heat islands and human health vulnerability the proactive effort will provide congress greater insights and multi stakeholder recommendations on three primary topics identify existing and emerging needs of local and regional governments to prepare and respond to human health vulnerability resulting from heat waves urban heat island effect climate change and power outages number two examine the roles and capabilities of federal agencies to support local and regional governments and suggest programs to improve these capabilities finally provide recommendations for future research initiatives that can reduce vulnerability and improve our national security i strongly caution that the timing of such an effort must be immediate by waiting and not addressing these issues in the present day we risk our population and our national security today and into the future thank you thank you for that courtesy mister chairman and i want to welcome dan keppen who is a good friend and one of the west's finest advocates for family farmers and ranchers he is a fellow oregonian dan resides in klamath county which is in the southern part of the district i have the honor of representing and dan has for the last three years served as the executive director of the family farm alliance which is a grassroots farmer advocacy group that aims to ensure the availability of reliable and affordable water for irrigation in the west before joining the family farm alliance in two thousand and five dan served three years as the executive director of the klamath water users association where i worked closely with him on one of the west's most prominent and challenging water management issues the klamath reclamation project and if anyone can speak with authority about the importance of water in the west for farms and families and communities it is dan keppen after all few people were more involved in helping find solutions in the two thousand and one water cutoff in the klamath basin than dan he is a real expert on water and farm issues knows full well the impacts that a change in the weather can have on those who make their living from the land from two thousand to two thousand and one dan served as the special assistant to the bureau of reclamation's mid pacific regional director in sacramento where he advised and assisted with planning managing directing and coordinating a variety of reclamations water management activities he received his master of science degree in civil engineering from oregon state university and a bachelor of science degree from the university of wyoming it is my pleasure to welcome before the committee dan alliance world headquarters in klamath falls oregon we represent irrigators in all seventeen western states we are also committed to the fundamental proposition that western irrigated agricultural must be preserved and protected for a host of  reasons many of which are often overlooked in the context of other policy decisions the topic of this oversight hearing is not only important to the alliance it is also relevant to water users farmers ranchers and small communities all over the western united states my board of directors in two thousand and seven made climate change a priority issue for our organization to engage in and last year we released a report entitled water supply in a changing climate the perspective of family farmers and rancher in the irrigated west i would like to focus on specific regions or watersheds in the west and they indicate that for the most part from the colorado river basin to the pacific northwest to the central valley of california climate change has and will continue to impact water supplies and the users dependent on those supplies in the future the western governors association has developed findings that are consistent with our examples of climate impact to water supplies across the west as reported in our document in general western governors predicts four general predictions smaller snow packs and earlier snowmelt more rain than snow extreme flood events which could be more common and become larger and droughts and higher temperatures which could be more intense frequent and last obviously have an impact on irrigators in some areas western water supplies are already challenged by the demands of agriculture urban growth and environmental enhancement global climate change we are told will further reduce those supplies so how will we meet the ever increasing demand for water in the west in an era when there will be an ever decreasing supply we recommend an adaptive approach as well to dealing with the uncertainties of climate change even if current efforts to mitigate for greenhouse gas emissions are successful the climate is still predicted to warm considerably over the next several decades which will have impacts on water supplies and water users improved conservation and efficiency by urban and agricultural water users is certainly part of the solution but only one part we must begin to implement a balanced suite of both conservation and supply enhancement actions conservation alone will not supply enough water for the tens of millions of existing and new residents expected to live in western cities during the coming decades we believe it is possible to meet the needs of cities and the environment in a changing climate without sacrificing western irrigated agriculture it is time to start developing and implementing the water infrastructure needed to cope with the changing climate meet the needs of a growing population protect our environment and support a healthy agricultural base in the west we need to streamline the often slow and cumbersome federal regulatory process to improve modernize and expand our water infrastructure finally we must prioritize our research needs to accomplish useful studies that inform water managers and their users of key actions that must be accomplished to deal with the changing climate my boss president of the science initiatives water efficiency programs and additional actions that will help us adapt to the water related impacts of global climate change these provisions closely matched similar recommendations made in the report that we developed while there is not currently a companion bill introduced in the house we would encourage the house to take up a similar bill to help speed its enactment into law we believe change of climate will further strain freshwater supplies in the american west we must begin to plan for that now and not wait until we are forced to make decisions during a crisis now is the time to enact sound policies and encourage continued investment in irrigated agriculture reallocating farmers water supplies will diminish domestic food production at exactly the same time global warming is predicted to severely adversely impact food production worldwide relying on agriculture to be a shock absorber to soften or eliminate the impending water shortage is not planning it is an easy fix that carries with it  normous consequences to our society and our nation while much of the debate surrounding what to do about climate change is centered on mitigation for greenhouse gas emissions we believe that climate change policies for irrigated agriculture in the future  address adaptive approaches that prepare for the worst case scenarios predicted for western watersheds thank you for this opportunity to appear before the committee again and i would happy to answer any questions you might have ms solis presiding thank you our next witness is heather cooley is a senior research associate with the pacific institute water and sustainability program at the institute her research involves water privatization california water issues and environmental justice and climate change prior to the institute she worked at the lawrence berkeley laboratory where she studied climate and land use change in carbon cycling she has published a book on freshwater resources ranging on issues from floods and droughts to impacts on businesses and ecosystems and has testif before the state of california regarding management of freshwater resources she holds a bachelor of science in molecular environmental biology with an emphasis in ecology from uc berkley and an ms in energy and resources from uc berkley welcome and thank you for coming ms cooley ms cooley thank you mister chairman and members of committee thank you for inviting me to offer testimony on the growing risk to the nation from extreme weather events as a result of climatic change i will limit my discussion here to floods and droughts and how we can adapt to these changes but my written testimony expands on a broader range of risks and responses floods and droughts have dominated the headlines in papers across the united states in recent months floods along the mississippi river and its tributaries have devastated communities throughout the midwest drought conditions are prevailing across large parts of the united states and in california drought conditions have spawned nearly two thousand fires since late june in what may turn out to be one of the worst fire seasons on record yet most the discussion about climate change has focused on average conditions but the nation is far more vulnerable to extreme events like those are experiencing throughout the country today these extreme events have the largest social economic and environmental impacts they kill and injure the most people and they cause the most damage to our economy and environment scientists are increasingly investigating the risks of these extreme events and in short they conclude we are loading the dice in favor of the increase in severe events and the nation's water resources appear to be most at risk in particular research now shows that warmer temperatures will intensify the hydrologic cycle leading to greater climate variability and unfortunately an increase in the risk of both floods and drought the idea that both floods and droughts may increase may seem counterintuitive to some but let me provide an example that is particularly relevant to the west to illustrate this point in the west snowfall and snowmelt are critical for water supply the research indicates that warmer temperatures will raise the snow line in mountainous regions causing more precipitation to fall as rain rather than snow and thereby increasing the likelihood of winter floods to make matters worse these higher temperatures will lead to an earlier and faster snowmelt increasing the likelihood of droughts and water shortages during the summer months when our farms and cities need water the most but what can we do about these growing risks impacts associated with climate change are now unavoidable but that doesn't mean we are helpless let me touch on a few options that my written testimony describes in much greater detail first smarter flood plain management in the past we have relied heavily on levees for flood protection but these measures can often give a false sense of security encouraging development and putting more lives and people at risk the one thousand nine hundred and ninety four galloway report from general galloway and the army corps of engineers strongly called for a new approach one based on and i quote avoiding the risks to the flood plain minimizing the impact of these risks when they cannot be avoided mitigating the impacts of damages when they occur and accomplishing the above in a manner that concurrently protects and enhances the natural environment second we must develop new alternative supplies recycled water for example can be used for a wide range of purposes from agricultural and landscape irrigation to power plant cooling and groundwater recharge agencies throughout the west are beginning to pursue recycled water but we need to encourage this transition in addition better groundwater management would allow us to restore excess surface water including storm water and groundwater aquifers during wet years for later use in dry years in the past we often looked at storm water as a liability and sought to get it out of our cities as quickly as possible but now communities are realizing that this is an asset that we can then recharge our groundwater and use it again when we need it and finally water conservation and efficiency offers enormous potential for reducing water pressures on water supply and must be central to any effort to adapt to climate change we have made some remarkable achievements in the past twenty five years and as the figures on page eleven of my written testimony indicate total water use in the nation has actually declined despite continued economic and population growth but much more potential to improve the efficiency of water use remains work we have done at the pacific institute indicates that the urban sector could reduce its water use by a third at lower cost than new supply and that is in california where very already done quite a bit but there is still a tremendous amount available there is also potential for the agricultural sector these efficiency improvements can also help us reduce the impacts of climate change capturing treating transporting and using water require large amounts of energy in california alone an estimated nineteen percent of the electricity used thirty two percent of the natural gas and eighty eight million gallons of diesel fuel consumption are water related thus conservation and efficiency improvements can also save energy thereby reducing our greenhouse gas emissions furthermore a recent analysis from the california energy commission found that energy can be saved through water conservation at lower cost than through traditional energy efficiency measures in closing i would like to urge members of the comm take action now waiting another five to ten years will only make solving these problems more difficult and costly furthermore all of the options i discussed smarter flood plain management better groundwater management recycled water and conservation makes sense under today's climate conditions and can help reduce current pressures on our water system thank you thank you our next witness is from my home state ms angela licata who serves as deputy commissioner for the new york city department of environmental protection and director of the bureau of environmental planning and analysis she has worked in nycdp for over twenty years as deputy commissioner she oversees climate change issues for the agency the development of a watershed and sewershed program for jamaica bay storm water management planning natural resource planning and sewer infrastructure planning as it relates to new growth stimulated by rezoning throughout the city she is also an expert in environmental planning assessment good afternoon members of the committee i am angela licata deputy commissioner with new york city's department of environmental protection on behalf of commissioner emily lloyd thank you for the opportunity to speak before your committee today climate change certainly raises serious challenges to the future of new york city's water supply delivery storm water management and wastewater treatment system in two thousand and seven mayor michael bloomberg released planyc this is a comprehensive sustainable urban plan for new york city that includes one hundred and twenty seven initiatives to create a greener more sustainable city one of the key challenges addressed by planyc is global climate change in may of two thousand and eight  dep released the first report of its climate change assessment and action plan detailing the extensive work that dep has undertaken to better understand and plan for the potential impacts of climate change on the city's water and sewer systems i am submitting the report to the committee for its consideration the report outlines specific steps that dep has taken to one refine climate change projections for the city of new york two better quantify risks to existing systems three integrate climate change data into current design for new projects four develop adaptation strategies for critical infrastructure adequate funding for ongoing research in the short term and for capital investments in infrastructure upgrades in the long term is crucial to our ability to adapt to a changing climate customized climate change projections performed for dep by columbia university's center for climate systems research goddard institute for space studies indicates that by two thousand and fifty new york city and its watershed region will experience a three to five degree fahrenheit rise in temperature a two point five to  seven five percent increase in precipitation and a six to twelve inch rise in sea level it is projected that these conditions will be even more pronounced by the year two thousand and eighty without proper planning and extensive adaptations this degree of climate change could have a significant effect on the city's drinking water quality and supply preliminary analysis indicates that rising temperatures could extend the growing season exaggerate the frequency and severity of droughts and heat waves will likely change the ecology of our watershed rising temperatures coupled with heavier participation could wash additional nutrients and particles into water supply reservoirs thereby increasing t eutrophication levels thus compromising the viability of new york city's currently unfiltered drinking water system increased precipitation could also overwhelm storm water drainage systems wastewater treatment facilities and sewer infrastructure rising seas coupled with storm surges pose a threat to our coastal wastewater treatment facilities recently in fact an observed increase in the frequency of severe rainfall events which may be evidence of changing climate conditions is alarming and unprecedented in the written record in two thousand and seven for example on april th seventeen inches of rain were recorded in upper manhattan the largest daily accumulation since one thousand eight hundred and eighty two on july th two thousand and seven between three and five inches of rain were recorded at locations across the city within a four hour period in some areas three inches of rain fell in one hour and on august th two thousand and seven between one point four and three five inches of rain were recorded within a two hour period our current storm water conveyance system is designed only for one point seven five inches of rainfa per hour given that the rate of return from much larger storms has historically occurred very infrequently climate change is a complex emerging issue the timing and extent of change are uncertain and modifying large scale infrastructure systems is expensive and takes time but with sufficient support we can develop and implement strategies that will help ensure the long term viability of our drinking water and wastewater systems working in concert with plan mayor bloomberg's comprehensive urban sustainability initiative dep is already planning for the diversification of new york city's drinking water supply by increasing the interconnectivity and flexibility of our systems we are also developing aggressive conservation programs increasing water supply protection measures through a robust land acquisition program within our watershed and building new drinking water quality infrastructure in another step forward new york city dep has also joined with water providers serving seven of the country's major metropolitan areas to form the water utility climate alliance working together we aim to foster research aimed at advancing climate science and to develop more robust decision support framework this alliance recognizes the importance of federal partnerships in this endeavor dep's ten year capital program budget is intended to fund infrastructure investments on a fifty year time integrating climate change projections with departmental planning will help ensure that the city's water and wastewater systems are more resilient and better prepared to withstand the volatile conditions of a changing climate once again i thank you for the opportunity the chairman thank you very much and adegoke's research also looks at linkages and feedback between the processes that impact air quality and heat stress in changing urban environments and as a member of the geosciences department he was recently invited to serve on the advisory committee of remote sensing experts to assist the united nations program in assessing various country level projects in ecosystem and water management in different african countries he has a b member sensenbrenner and all the members of the select committee for this opportunity to appear before you and address the energy and environmental challenges facing our nation climate variability and climate  particular focusing on the midwest region i would like to thank congressman emanuel cleaver who is my representative for his service on this important select committee and his guidance locally the united states economically vital to the united states this region is also susceptible to substantial interannual and interdecadal variations in summer climate resulted in an estimated fifty two dollars billion lost in farm and property damage in the midwest the last two summers two thousand and seven and two thousand and eight have been especially devastating for us for large swaths of the midwest due to the back to back floods that have destroyed thousands of acres of prime farmland in several states and submerged whole communities the federally funded flood insurance program for the same reason this makes residents in these communities ineligible for federal aid under the existing rules for the national flood insurance program so against this assessments and the trend in both temperature and precipitation in the midwest in particular they reflect these same national trends with some regional variations for example we know that the northern midwest has warmed by almost four degrees model projections suggests that these trends will continue and will in fact accelerate in a warming world higher temperatures will increase the water holding capacity of the atmosphere and encourage contention is that while this gives us a direction to go forward we need to begin to address these issues in particular from a vulnerability perspective we are already vulnerable and we need to think about appreciate it there are four roll calls that are going to be conducted out on the house floor there are eleven minutes to go before that roll call what i thought i could do is recognize the gentleman from washington state for a round of questions and then if actually limit the amount of warming that we experience and climatic change that we experience mister keppen basically our mission statement is focused completely on you know water and water issues and so as a board we have not dealt with that personally i am on governor kulongoski's climate change integration group in oregon and that is an issue that is being discussed there i think agriculture definitely needs to be involved from a personal standpoint but as an organization we haven't taken a inslee well i would encourage you to think about that and become engaged in that discussion and the reason i say that is that ag i think has probably got as much at risk as any other sector of our community and knowing how system is in eastern oregon and eastern washington how we are always on the edge it could be pushed over by reductions in our snow pack and just dry years we need your leadership and we need your engagement in this issue  strongly share your interest in water and in conserving water in arizona we began a very aggressive program toward groundwater storage and restricting the use of groundwater but also recharging our water  table i guess i am interested in some innovative ideas from you briefly on that topic but also i recently built a home and i very seriously considered a gray water system i didn't put it in and i now regret that i am interested in your thoughts on how widespread that  cooley there are number of things we can do one of the additional benefits which i didn't talk a bit about was on the issue of storm water much of the storm water runoff is really what is polluting our rivers and streams and so capturing that and finding in terms of actions that can be done ensuring that all new development does integrate those principles i think is one of the first things we need to do and also encourage that development doesn't occur on some of our most important recharge areas  huge sudden storms and we lose all that water and it is tragic i don't think we can go on doing that what about gray water systems ms cooley gray water systems i always get asked about that it is a very interesting topic some areas in some regions have regulations against it and that is something that we need to kind of standardize and systemize so that there is some consistency even within a given state i think in new development it makes a lot of sense retrofitting existing developments can be expensive and then there are other things that we could do at lower costs such as taking out turf and putting in low water use landscapes and those kinds of things there is plenty of beautiful landscape that is well adapted to the desert that not only reduces water use also reduces fertilizers pesticide and provides habitat for local species mister shadegg yeah but some of us though believe that all that green grass reduces the temperature where we live i happen to live where there is a lot of green grass and i can show you the drop in the thermometer in my car as i drive into my neighborhood so i would rather clean my gray water and water my grass if i could but i would want to clean my gray water doctor golden i would like to ask you two questions in the limited time i have one is i am interested in your testimony on the point that the average temperature i believe you testified in the phoenix area had come down three point one degrees but in the urban portion of the metropolitan area or of the county i am sorry it had gone up three point one degrees but in the urban area it had gone up by seven point six degrees can you explain that and maybe at the same time give us some examples of the practical application of your research and perhaps also of the kinds of materials we might be able to be using in the future that would be more advantageous than materials we have been using  states we would track the same type of delta t the temperature difference between the urban and rural area and while it is true that the temperature has gone up seven point six degrees fahrenheit if we look at the temperature difference between an unchanged and it very easy to do in arizona at casa grande national monument in comparison to where phoenix temperature recordings have been done we are now almost fourteen degrees fahrenheit warmer at night than our rural counterparts and as we see the population increase we see that temperature difference increase basically we remove our native vegetation whether it is cactus or trees or other grass and we replace that with engineered materials buildings concrete asphalt and those have a different thermodynamic process in short they are darker they absorb the heat and high school physics when you cover these buildings you can't reradiate long wave radiation so they don't cool off quickly and so we have this urban heat island effect so for cities there are quite a few things they could look at and we are looking at if we were fortunate enough to fly in the goodyear blimp we would look down at phoenix and we would see about forty percent the largest component for most western state cities is comprised of paved services driveways parking lots  cetera the idea of incorporating smart water wastewater issues pervious concrete pervious asphalt on paved services that can retain the storm water and use it for beneficial reuse to sustain trees which of building materials in certain climates green roofs are appropriate so there are quite a few things that can be done i would mention that the u s epa heat island reduction initiative does provide a clearinghouse for a lot of these initiatives  are in trouble we passed legislation at the state legislative level to repaint the tops of all of our buses white so we are thinking about this stuff a little bit but we are thinking about it late it seems to me it is something we have to incorporate into our thinking it is pretty clear that the building materials we using are retaining heat and some of the concepts that you mentioned they are not retaining water i think there is a lot of progress we can make here to try to diminish the impact of urbanization upon the environment in which we  floods in wisconsin down through iowa and missouri the drought fueled forest fires in california as a nation we need to increase our resilience to these events especially as global warming makes them more intense and frequent to plan effectively for the future it is essential that regional scale information is available does that information exist today do compile regional data that is imperative for a more refined understanding of what is occurring and what we will be able to predict in the future what i also indicated though are two glaring issues  the first being that there is not a centralized mission agency that can take all of this data and be able to provide back to other agencies as well as local regional and government a most refined understanding of what is occurring on the regional level secondly is someone who tries to understand what is occurring and what will occur in the future and provide that to local and regional governments we rely heavily not only on local climate and meteorological stations but on remote sensing that being satellite images and as i indicated a variety of our satellites are due to expire we do not have a dedicated urban system and the refinements by that the  detail that is provided in these images is somewhat coarse right now and the technology provides for much greater refinement the chairman let me ask then other members of the panel who would like to respond what roles should the federal government play chairman one of the things that i would like to draw attention to is that there has been a substantial amount of cut in the funding for many of the monitoring programs for example for the usgs many of the stream gauge stations have been shut down and that data is no longer being maintained so increasing funding for those programs so that we can actually look at trends and see what is happening i think is critical in addition looking at projections climate projections and then down scaling them t local and regional levels so that water utilities can make use of that information and use that in their planning in california there is a very comprehensive effort to do that at the state level it is a program done by the california energy commission and they have pulled together a team of researchers using the same climate models the same emissions scenarios and are looking at impacts associated with that so doing those types of activities regionally in other states i think i one of the reasons that we joined together with other metropolitan cities that are searching for good research with respect to climate change signs is exactly for the reason that we  institutions sort of foraging out and working on these issues independently and we feel that the federal government certainly has a role to provide us with unified research on this  extremely important to water managers to have good data on precipitation and precipitation trends so i echo you know the comments made earlier by the members of the panel but it is extremely important for the federal research to take on this role of looking at the questions that the water managers are asking and to have focused research on some of those  ideas and questions and particularly with respect to precipitation which is something that we are all struggling with at this point are dependent on the federal government as well as on the academic institutions role really is in enhancing capacity at the local level to climate change and climate variability presents various levels of risks and vulnerabilities to various sectors you think about agriculture you think about whatever sector you pick up you know or even our city systems if we look at our cities across the country you know we are vulnerable at various money you think would be needed and which agency should get it and what are the responsibilities that we should give them in order to provide the regional information mister adegoke well every agency that has a responsibility for some sector of mind who would we put the coordinating responsibilities with to ensure that our package is then sent to a region how would you construct that federal government responsibility so that it was coordinated there and it didn't come in from five different locations which agency should be the lead agency ms licata ms licata there is the climate change science program and that is currently the federal organization that is supposed to centralize all of the activities of the agencies and there are multiple amounts of agencies engaged in the climate change research and science so that is the climate change science program and i believe they are based out of noaa i believe it is out of noaa but it to me and because i do believe that the data and research regarding the weather trends precipitation the rain gauges is really very important i would suggest that that would be the right way to proceed the chairman doctor golden do you think noaa should be the think just as long as all these parties have a fair say and there is some coordination going on so people know what other agencies are doing i think that would be helpful and i would also say that bill the secure water act contains provisions that provide funding for additional monitoring and testing and more stream gauges and coordinating between entities in that way the chairman do you think noaa though noaa is inside of commerce is noaa really the best agency in your opinion thank you well i think there is a difference too are we just talking about monitoring and looking at what is projected under climate change or are we then looking at impacts because if we are talking about impacts there is going to be a lot of different agencies that are involved in that and i would  so it has got to be something that has real accountability and people really feel oh this is important we have a rising storm here in the community so we have to do it in a way that not only has accountability but that you all know their name you know of mentioned taking a bottom up vulnerability perspective and researching the impacts of climate change can you describe what is needed for this research and how the future scientific assessments such as the one recently released by the united states climate change science projections and the down scaled information that we get from these models do not sufficiently capture okay the understanding that we need to begin to address the question of risk and vulnerability what we need okay is to take a sectoral approach we have to do a sectoral approach we have to look at specific sectors look at water systems say for instance in small communities will look at health across the spectrum you know we will look at agricultural systems you know and then do an assessment of risk for each of the sectors so this i think question about who should be a lead agency we do need a lead agency yes to give direction okay but this work has what i think we really need is a u s government that is going to say everything that we do as a government everybody that we fund as a government needs to look at this question of how are we as a society vulnerable where are our risks use some of the money that we are giving you we are going to increase some of your funding to address this issue   many of you today have highlighted the amount of water consumed by our fossil fuel and nuclear energy sources mister keppen in your testimony i was struck by the statistics that by two thousand and thirty utilities could account for up to sixty percent of the nonfarm water consumed in the entire united states that is a staggering amount of water just to be consumed by the fossil fuel and nuclear energy industries ms cooley you testified that wind and photo voltaic technologies require none to very little water for energy production this connection between water use and energy production is one that is little understood by the public or even members of congress how do the witnesses on our panel today suggest that as issues and planning so that if we are looking at water supply we also look at what the energy implications are of those water supply options another way would be through as i testified water conservation and efficiency that that is an important way to not only reduce water use but to reduce energy use and doing so is cost effective so including measures that not only save water but saving energy perhaps setting federal standards for clothes washers for example both consume tremendous amount of water and energy and some of the newer versions that are on the market reduce that use considerably also when considering energy technologies to look at what the water uses are and to consider whether that is an appropriate use of our water resources in the areas that they are being considered the chairman but if sixty percent of the water that is non farmed is in the utility sector does that not call for a solar and win revolution in america is that basically what we need to have by two thousand and thirty in order to prevent this incredible consumption of water by a very narrow part of the total american economy ms cooley well it does s opportunities and some additional benefits that wind and solar can provide so not only reducing our greenhouse gas emissions but reducing our vulnerability to water supply constraints in my written testimony i have provided a couple of newspaper headlines that talk about how water availability affects energy production and as we look into the future with an increased incidence of drought as we know that we are going to have constraints on both energy and water the chairman so i think it was your testimony doctor golden that made a reference to the additional amount of electrical generating capacity we were going to need in the year two thousand and thirty in the united states to make up for the increased demand plus the retirement of older plants could you watts of electricity by two thousand and twenty five will be needed in the united states so if a high percentage of them are nuclear or coal then we are going to  see huge consumption of water we will hit that sixty percent target for nonfarm water consumption in the utilities sector mister golden well i would add one other factoid to this as the usgs in the not go without impacts to our environment and ecological systems as we heat the water use the water through cooling towers and then send it back out  department of energy hasn't factored in increased efficiency in appliances and air conditioning and other devices and we know for the first six years of the bush administration they missed all thirty five deadlines but let's assume that no president for the next eighteen years meets any deadlines and we have the worst case scenario which i am assuming that that is what the department of energy must be talking about this year there is an estimation that seven thousand new megawatts of wind will be constructed in the united states so if you go between now and two thousand and eighteen and you are very conservative and it is just seven zero new megawatts of wind per year and you multiply that by eighteen that might come out to let's just say was only producing fifty thousand megawatts by then then you might be up to one hundred and eighty thousand or so of the two hundred and eighty zero megawatts that you need in other words a lot of this is avoidable if you move over to the renewable chairman so if we put in place a program of moving to wind and solar perhaps geothermal plus natural gas we could probably drive down dramatically the amount of water by two thousand and twenty five that  being consumed in the electrical generating sector do you agree with that mister golden i would but i would caution one caveat when we talk about electrical generation we need to think about base versus peak so as an advocate of renewable energy i concur with your statements my only caution is that we need to ensure that this is a base load and we can also meet our peak the chairman well a lot of people are saying that because of the high price now for oil that it is driving up the price of natural gas and as a result we are discovering a lot more natural gas in the united states so if we used the natural gas as the base load and then we built our wind and solar around it as planned so that you still had the base lo natural gas and whatever you know is the remainder of coal is that a strategy for reducing water consumption while still maintaining the base load capacity  need a plan for america going forward towards two thousand and twenty five because what you have laid out here is pretty catastrophic in terms of the amount of water being consumed and what the impact then is on all the other needs that we have in our society so frustrated me for years how hard it worked to get the most minimal reforms in the flood insurance program where we kept putting people back in harm's way i would particularly  policies that relate to the promotion the things going forward we can do with federal agricultural policy to try and take advantage of preserving key lands using it to preserve and protect communities and be able to strengthen the agriculture even though we missed the boat with the farm bill literally and figuratively i wonder if you had other thoughts and observations about what we could and should be doing at this point keppen well one of the i guess you brought up an observation earlier about land use and how the government can work on that and it sounds like your comments were targeted towards flood insurance in the west our watershed areas are almost all owned by the federal government and they are in bad shape i don't know if you have been to northern colorado or southern wyoming lately but those watersheds are dying the trees are dying even around where i live klamath falls we have got lots of areas where beetle kills taken out trees we have got to get back and get serious about watershed management and that has benefits not just for timber and wildlife and economies but also flood control because most of your areas draining get out and develop partnerships with conservation groups we worked with conservation groups on the farm bill to try to come up with some programs that would help water supplies in rural areas it is getting to the point right now where that is going to be the way of doing business just so the economics are forcing agriculture i think to start to be a little bit more innovative and maybe creating partnerships with groups that we have been adversaries with in the past so those are some of the things that we are working on  leave as an open ended request for suggestions about specific policies it seems to me that we have a new transportation bill that is coming forward we are going to be looking at energy the cap trade is going to be likely no matter who is president and being able to use a small portion of this resource to be able to help people to be able to cope with the disaster as it relates to water policies on federal land itself that should be adjusted flood insurance so the sense of priority that you have for things that we are going to have roofs and they are not really picturesque it is really a tank on a roof but what it does is it has the effect of detaining storm water mister hall thank you very much and i compliment you on your work and the mayor for his leadership in this regard  how can congress help local communities best address this particular threat ms licata one of the very significant challenges that new york has is really the age of its infrastructure system and what we need sorely is to build out the remainder of infrastructure so we have these two problems one we have not kept pace with development pressures in the outer boroughs so we have a lot of infrastructure that still has yet to be built and two we really need to resize and rethink infrastructure that was built say in the early s and before we saw major growth after system which runs through my district and several reservoirs in my district and other upstate districts in the th district of new york we have had three fifty year floods in the last five years some of the  extreme weather events that the doctor and the rest of the panel have been talking about and i am curious in terms of the delaware watershed which has experienced in particular april th of last year the nor'easter that  jervis and other communities in orange county and also my hometown of dover plains in dutchess county where the ten mile was flooding again for the third fifty year time in a five year period there has been talk about whether the new york city reservoir system could be used if we knew in advance that an extreme rain event was about to happen and whether there is a possibility of letting some water out in advance so that then it can be some of the rain can be retained i understand it is a complicated question and it requires maybe better science than we have but do you have any thoughts about those ms licata it is a very complicated question to answer in a very short amount of time but what i will say is that the department has implemented a flexible flow management program and what that allows us to do is to maintain a certain void within those reservoirs on the delaware system however that void can only be maintained when we have a certain or a more certain probability of refill so once we get past june one it is very difficult for us to maintain a void because we won't have the well at least by hindcasting we won't have precipitation events that we can be certain of so one of the other strategies that we can use is to look to make our croton system more robust we are bringing our filtration plans online there and to be able to develop aqueducts that will allow further interconnect have time for each of you to give us your concluding twenty seconds that is all you have what do you want us to remember for the final twenty seconds cooley thank you chairman thank you again for inviting me here today to speak i think the things i would like you to remember today is that we are faced with challenges both from climate change as it is related to floods and droughts and from  continued population growth the good news is that we have a number of options available that are not only effective today but are effective in the future and so i would encourage the government and the legislature to go ahead and move forward and pursue these water in the west limited supplies right now agriculture is the default reservoir to meet a lot of these new demands we need to be thinking about our ability as a country to be self sufficient and somehow that needs to find its way into the highest levels of the national policy  licata we need to update floodplain maps within the city of new york and two i believe we need federal partnerships to go ahead about the business of down scaling those global i should capacity that we have in this country to begin to address the questions of risk and vulnerability that we are facing as a society the chairman thank you doctor adegoke very much we have a roll call on the floor that will begin in a minute and twenty