welcome welcome to all of our guests here today at the select committee on energy independence and lobal warming in our hearing on global warming facts on extreme weather this hearing is called to order well the warming is a tale of extremes it is not enough water it is too much water it is californians battling to protect their homes from drought build wild wildfires it is midwest communities sandbagging levees to hold back the flood waters 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 are 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 mother nature's dyce mor extreme weather as global warming pollution increases we are rewriting the book on the planet's weather and climate in the latest eyeopening reports from the united states climate change science program scientists are predicting increases in 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 and 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 of that and there are solutions today will hear we will hear from a panel of experts who understand the extreme weather challenges our nation will face but are also actively working towards solutions to these challenges their test money today will guide us towards a path of increasing our resilience to extreme weather but we cannot simply treat the symptoms and fail to address the underlying set 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 wa or to the wildfires that burn millions of acres every year in the west ought to the cities that struggled to provide water for their growing populations for their agriculture for their hydroelectric power production at the same time extreme precipitation has caused the current devastation in the midwest perhaps no weather disaster highlights our weakness the climate challenges then are an adequate response to 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 i 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  vulnerable people from the impacts we can no longer avoid while reducing global warming pollution schoolboy climate crisis it is time for this congress to write climate legislation that will ensure that the next chapter of our story is one chairman 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 passed by july fourth of natural disasters are something we humans have been learning to adapt to throughout time last month i saw firsthand the effect of severe weather wisconsin was among the states hard hit by floods a direct have a through much of the midwest thirty wisconsin counties were declared disaster areas including all five in my district the county of waukesha suffered ninety million dollars in damages and many people were homeless because of the flooding was causing a scene many floods and they often come with summer rains for better or for worse as part of my state's natural meteorological said cycle and while floodwaters 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'll have to adapt projections show that no cutting greenhouse gases no matter how steep and stop over the next decade that's why i believe that adaptation should be a high priority in confronting climate change while wisconsin was recently overflowing and water other parts of the country have 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 this testimony will also point out the need for a balance of both water conservation and s treamlined 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 mr kemp and pointed out that in california some of projected it will take two point five trillion gallons or two thousand five hundred billion gallons of water to produce that state schools a billion gallons of ethanol here is another reason to oppose this wasteful fuel subsidy and the mandates which were quadrupled in the last years energy bill these mandates in 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're going to be preparing for 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 are caus 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 but sometimes there's nothing we can do but to just a couple comments you know i come from washington state we get a little rain up in washington state and people think washing state is sort of the epicenter of you know extreme events we don't have many tornadoes or hurricanes but last year we had a rain event that for the first time in one hundred thirty five years close mt rainier national park and literally destroyed a lot of the places i had grown up with really really beautiful places when i  place called sourdough mound last summer and right in the middle 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 of this little teeny tiny creek it absolutely insane is incredible rain event and that kind of rain event is completely consistent with more frequent rain events of 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's something we expect in the reason i mention that is when people talk about these events that mountain sourdough mounted been there for a long long time there were 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 tampa's gray s environment in the country the second thing i want to say is that when we think of extreme weather events we're thinking of extreme in the human sense but there's extreme weather events that can cause enormous differences in the world that there 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 produced to be gone in total by late summer within the next several decades and there is some indication that this year could see an eighty percent plus reduction of the arctic summer icecap this year there was a seventy or eighty percent reduction last year which shocked the scientific community what i want to make is that relatively small we would chairman for holding this hearing i'd like to begin by welcoming him welcoming dr j golden of my home state of arizona to the committee dr 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 dr gold 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 phenomenon as a young boy growing up in arizona i can remember the summer weather which would always bring storms to the value from the southeast these are called the it was called the monsoon season and they would bring you just arms 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 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 miles after square mile of concrete and asphalt and 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  insulating them or thinking about their energy footprint 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  water water tables they're providing millions of 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 firestorms we're not even in that period right now in california where the santa ana winds are whipping up that's going to happen later on after august and september and we know that we are we are really over utilizing our resources and you for the hearing and i want to welcome our witnesses in thank them for coming before us to talk about extreme weather in global warming dan everyone agrees that extreme precipitation events are on the but the question for many of us is this a trend or is it just natural and a natural occurrence since mr chairman i have two articles that were published in water resources research  and the australian meteorological magazine that shed some light on the issue and i've used them in my preparation for today and i'd like to submit those to the record without objection i thank you mr chairman these papers stand the intensity levels were high in some years and low in others and a significant increase in the number of funder days but they concluded that there was nothing unusual about the recent tranche and i look forward to hearing from you all on the the trends could not be attributed to global warming and most increases weren't due to climate change instead the changes actually stem from observational artificial trends in climate data and we also have some research on the tree ring from their international conference and we're looking forward to covering that with you hearing from you on the issues again we want to make certain that drought heat and excessive fires massive fires people that live in the district are breathing smoke in one hundred ten degree weather so there's a lot of concern about the future what that means this sort of  is consistent with what i believe global warming bring california is deserts claiming territory farther and farther north second the manifest going to manifest by fires and it's going to manifest by heat and drought so  i'm 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 can join in here in terms of what climate change may mean for those of us from the west and i think my colleague from california spoke of the fires that they're unfortunately experiencing in oregon usually follows california in the fire wave of the 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 and more drought act which is work well around our wild land urban interface is let us do that out in a condition class two and three lands that are most out of whack with the balance of nature so we can get ahead of this a bit get those forests in so that they can be more adapt the changing climate and be able to resist the wildfire that we know will come because it will be thinned out you won't have a ladder fuels and therefore fire will act like it used to act before we suppress fire the second issue i think that we all in the west specially the arid west need to be cognizant of if it is going to be drier than 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 a appropriate way how we best manage our water we're going to get some great testimony i think today from dan cap and later on this topic and others so i think there are things that congress could do to change the law that would help on water management storage and forest health and survivability of our forests reducing greenhouse gas emissions and and in the threat of dr golden has a wide background not just from academics he served as an environmental crimes detective he served as regional operations vice president for a fortune fortune five hundred company 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 injured engineering and sustainable development from the cambridge mit institute he currently serves as an assistant professor in the school of sustainability and 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 and human health energy and economic impacts and he was appointed the united nations life cycle management task force and vialli he directs th committee thank you for that introduction mr chairman congressman sensenbrenner and other members of the committee thank you for this opportunity to eschew on these important issues the national center which i direct supports local and regional agencies to develop strategies to reduce vulnerability and risks 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 support state regional local governments as they seek to protect our national security brac number one is more people in the united states die from heat related events and all of their weather related phenomenon that is more americans die each year from stream heat from than from lightning hurricanes tornadoes and floods combined back to number two global climate change which will increase human health bonar ability is more frequent and extreme weather events including he ways impact our country and their two thousand and eight report the us climate change science program concluded that abnormally hot days and nights and heat waves are very likely to become more frequent additionally since the record high of one thousand nine hundred eighty six of the last ten years of it and you'll average temperatures that fall in the hottest temperature cent of all years recorded in history for the u s factor number three is the urban heat island effect over half of our planet's population now lives in cities of thirty percent from fifty years ago but 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 twentieth century however mean annual temperatures in just the urban portions of our region have increased seven point six degrees fahrenheit factor for vulnerable electrical system in the us parts of our electrical delivery capability are increasing risk of failure urban heat islands and he was from certain cause increased demand by two thousand and twenty five u s electricity consumption is projected to grow by fifty percent over two thousand and three levels to meet this rising demand and equipment almost one hundred fifty new power plants three hundred megawatts each will be needed the primary means of adaptation to climate change is mechanical cooling air conditioning the greater demand the more fragile our system becomes as older  mechanical breakdowns and as heavily laden power line stretches from key my recommendation 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 bodies 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 in the environment from climate change urban heat islands and failures of electrical power systems scientists continue to develop and find very complex predictive models to gain a greater understanding of urban and global climate change however the current dedicated satellite system that provides a basis for ability to prevent human harmful impacts is in jeopardy of phase out abandonment and or failure action item number three streamline enhanced electricity interruption reporting requirements we lack an effective and consistent national level program that examines interactions of the built environment climate and safe electricity to build the delivery for 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  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 developments of the report to all appropriate committees of congress on the issues of heat waves urban heat islands and human health on her ability proactive effort will provide congress greater insights and multi sticker 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 our national security today and to the future thank you thank you for that courtesy mr chairman and i want to welcome dan cap'n who is a good friend and one of the west finest advocates for family farmers and ranchers as a fellow oregonian dan resides in klamath county which is in the southern part of the district  honor representing and dan is 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 but for joining the family farm alliance in two thousand and five dan served three years as executive director of the climate water users association where i worked closely with him on one of the issues the west most prominent and challenging water management issues a climate reclamation project and if anyone can speak with authority about the importance of water in the west for farms and families and communities it stand cap and after all few people or more involved in helping find solutions in the two thousand and one water cut off in the climate base and dan is real expert on water and farm issues knows full well the impact of the change in the weather can have on those who make their living from the land in two thousand to two thousand and one down served as a special assistant to the bureau of reclamation pacific regional director in sacramento where he advised assisted with planning managing directing and coordinated a variety of reclamation water management activities he received his master's of science degree in civil engineering from oregon state university and a bachelor of science degree from the university of wyoming pleasure to welcome before the committee dan alliance world headquarters in klamath falls oregon and we represent irrigators in all seventeen western states we are also committed to the fundamental proposition that western irrigated agriculture 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 ranchers in the irrigated west  respectfully submit this to be included in the hearing record today thank you our report shows that climate change could further strain fresh water supplies in the american west and provide several examples of studies that 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 user is dependent on those supplies in the future the western governors association has developed findings that are consistent with our examples of climate impacts across the west as reported in our document and general western governors predicts for general greenhouse gases emissions are successful the climate is still predicted the warm considerably over the next several decades which will have impacts on water supplies and water users improve conservation and efficiency by urban agricultural water use is certainly part of the solution but only one part we must begin to implement a balance of both conservation supply and conservation alone will not supply enough water for the tens of millions of existing a new residents expected to live 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 science initiatives water efficiency programs and additional actions that will help us adapt to water related impacts of global climate change 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 into law we believe that will further strain fresh water supply as an american we must begin to plan for that now and not wait until we are forced to make decisions during a crisis now's the time to enact policies that 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 adverse impact the impact food production worldwide relying on agriculture to be a shock absorber to soften or eliminate the impending water shortage is not planning it's an easy fix that carries with it enormous consequences to our society and our nation while much of the debate surrounding what to do about climate change mitigation for greenhouse gas emissions we believe that climate change policies are irrigated agriculture in the future need to address adaptive approaches that prepare for the worst case scenarios predicted for western waters thank you for this opportunity to appear before the committee again and happy to answer any questions you might have next witness is heather cooley is a senior research associate with the pacific institute water and sustainability program at the institute a researcher devolves 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 in land use change in carbon cycling she's published a book on freshwater resources ranging on issues from floods and droughts to impacts on business is an eco system and has testif before the state of california regarding management of fresh water resources she holds a bachelor of science in molecular environmental biology with an emphasis in a college e from u c berkeley and an m s in energy and resources from u c berkeley welcome and thank you for coming this coolly thank you mr chairman and members of the 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 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 rivers 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 spawn nearly two thousand fires since late june and what may turn out to be one of the worst fire seasons on record yet most of the discussion about climate change has focused on average can destroy conditions but the nation is far more vulnerable to extreme events like those we're experiencing throughout the country today these extreme advance have the largest social economic and environmental impacts they kill and injure the most people and they cause the most damage to our economy environment scientists are increasingly investigating the risks of either of these extreme events and in short they conclude we're loading the dice in favor of an increase in severe events and the nation's water resources appear to be most at risk in particular research now shows that warmer tense 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 snow fall and snow melt are critical for water supply the research indicates that warmer temperatures will raise the snow line in mountainous regions causing more precipitation to fall this rain rather than snow and thereby increasing the likelihood of winter floods to make matters worse these higher temperatures relieved to an earlier and faster snow melt 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 in my written testimony describes in much greater detail for smarter floodplain management in the past we've 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 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 of the flood plain minimizing the impact of these risks when they cannot be avoided mitigating the impacts of damages when they occur in accomplishing in the butt of 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 ground water recharge agencies throughout the west are beginning to pursue recycled water but we need to encourage the strains ition in addition better ground water management would allow us to a store excess surface water including storm water and groundwater aquifers during what years for later use and 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 bend recharge our groundwater and use it again when we need it and finally water conservation and efficiency offers enormous potential for reducing water potential 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 four 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've 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's in california where we've already done quite a bit but there's still a tremendous amount available there's 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 use 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 discuss smarter floodplain management better ground water management recycled water and conservation makes sense under today's climate conditions that can help reduce current pressures on our water system thank you thank you and our next witness is from my home state as angela cotta 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 n y c for over twenty years as deputy commissioner she oversees climate change issues for the agency the development of the watershed and sewer said 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 cotta 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 raise serious challenges to the future of new york city's water supply delivery strong word of management and wastewater treatment systems in two thousand and seven mayor michael bloomberg released plan y c this is a comprehensive sustainable urban plan for new york city that includes one hundred twenty seven initiatives to create a greener more sustainable city one of the key challenges addressed by plan y c is global climate change in may of two thousand and eight d released the first report of its climate change assessment and action plan detailing the extensive work that d p s undertaken to better understand and plan for the potential impact of climate change on the city's water and sewer system i am submitting the report to the committee for its consideration the report outlines specific steps the d p is taking to one refine climate change projections for the city of new york to better quantify risks to existing systems three integrate climate change data into current design for new projects for 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 d p by columbia university's center for climate systems research nasa's goddard institute for space studies indicates that by twenty fifty new york city and its watershed region will experience a three to five degree fahrenheit rise in temperature of two point five to seven point five percent increase in precipitously sion and a six to twelve inch rise in sea level it is projected these conditions will be even more pronounced by the year twenty 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 precipitation could wash additional nutrients and particles into water supply reservoirs thereby increasing t unused vacation 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 fifteenth seventeen inches of rain were recorded in upper manhattan the largest daily accumulation since eight hundred eighty two on july eighteenth two thousand and seven between three and five inches of rain 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 eighth two thousand and seven between one point four and three and a half inches of rain were recorded within a two hour period our current storm were to convey an system is designed only for one point seven five inches of rainfa per hour given that the rate of return for much larger storms as historic occurred very infrequently climate changes occur a merging 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 waste water systems working in concert with plan y c mayor bloomberg comprehensive sustainability initiative d p is already planning for the diversification of the new york city's drinking water supply by increasing the interconnectivity and flexibility of our systems we are also developing aggressive conservation programs increasing supply protection measures through a robust land acquisition program within our borders and building new drinking water quality infrastructure and another step forward new york city d p s also joined with water providers serving seven of the country's major metropolis 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 capital program budget is intended to fund infrastructure investment on a fifty year time  creating projections with the department of planning will help ensure that the city's water and wastewater systems are more resilient and better prepared to withstand the ball to conditions of a changing climate once again i thank you for the opportunity thank you very much and research also looks at linkages and feedbacks between the processes that impact air quality and he stressed 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 assess the united nations program in assessing various country level projects and ecosystem and water management and different african countries he has a b s he has member since brenner and all the members of a select committee for these opportunity to appear before you and address the energy and environmental challenges facing our nation climate variability and climate change in resulted in an estimated fifty two billion dollars loss in farm in family and farm and property damage in the midwest the last two summers two thousand and seven and two thousand and eight have been especially areas lack flood insurance because they leave in areas deemed to five hundred year flood plains where mortgage bonds banks do not require flood insurance for them and it's been reported that many communities in wisconsin in iowa missouri either dropped out of the or never even participated in the federally funded not five minute supports the view the scientific evidence that supports the view that we are indeed in a regime of enhanced climate variability we're already there we're not looking we're not looking for a full fall  evidence has accumulated to show that the climate is changing and will continue to change now the u s the trying in the u s is a follows exactly what's what we know from global assessments and the trend in both temperature and precipitation in the midwest in particular they reflect the same national trends which on regional variations for example we know that the northern midwest have won't by almost four degrees climate model predicts projections suggest that these trends will continue and will in fact a salary in a warming world higher temperatures will increase the water holding capacity of the atmosphere and encourage greater have operative operation resulting in conditions that people increase climate variability and with more intense precipitation and more droughts we can also expect to expect increased frequency and severity of heat waves and great up with  contention is that while these gave us a sense of direction to go forward we need to begin to address this in particular from a vulnerability perspective we already vulnerable and we need to think about system is in oregon or washington how we're always on the edge to be pushed over by reactions that are snowpack and dry years we need your leadership and we need your engagement in this issue i strongly share your interest in water and in conserving water in arizona we began a very aggressive program towards groundwater storage and restricting the use of groundwater but also recharging our water  table i guess i'm interested in some innovative ideas from you briefly on that topic but also i recently built a home and i very seriously considered putting in a gray water system i didn't put it in and i now regret that i'm interested in your thoughts on how widespread that  our reliance on water and then i have some questions for dr gold your first question was on was on ground water banking and what actions we can do to encourage and incentivize i was is that correct  yes there are a number of things we can do one of the additional benefits which it which i didn't talk a bit about was on the issue of stormwater much of the storm water runoff is really what's 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 in the southwest we have  huge sudden storms and we lose all that water and tragic i don't think we can go on doing that what about grey water systems great water systems i always get asked about that it's very interesting topic some areas in some regions have regulations against it and that's something that we need to kind of standardize so that there is some consistency even within it within a given state i think in new development it makes a lot of sense retrofitting existing developments can be expensive and there are other things gray water and water my grass if i could but i would want to clean my gray water golden and i'd like to ask you two questions in the limited time i have one is i'm interested in your testimony on the point that the average temp venture i believe you in the phoenix area had come down three point one degrees but in the urban portion of the metropolitan area of the county had gone up three point one degrees but in the urban area gone up by seven point six degrees can you explain that and maybe 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've been using the we would track the same type of delta t the temperature difference between the urban and rural area and while the temperature has gone up seven point six degrees fahrenheit if we look at the temperature difference between an unchanged and it's very easy to do in arizona casa grande a national monument in comparison to temperature recordings have been done we are now almost fourteen degrees fahrenheit warmer at night than our rule counterparts and as we see the popular increase we see the temperature difference increase and that's basically we remove our native vegetation whether it's cactus or trees or other grass and we replace that with engineered materials buildings concrete asphalt and those have a different thermodynamic process and short darker they absorb the heat and high school physics when you cover these buildings you can't radiate long way radiation to them cool off quickly and so we have this urban heat island effect so for cities there's quite a few things they can look at and we're looking at if we are fortunate to fly in the goodyear blimp we look down at phoenix and see about forty percent the largest component for most western states cities is comprised of pay services driveways parking lots the idea of incorporating smart water waste water issues pervious concrete previous asphalt on pay services that can retain the storm water and use it for beneficial reuse to sustain trees which of building materials and certain climates green growth are appropriate so there's quite a few things that can be done i would mention that the u s e p a reduction initiative does provide a clearing house for a lot of these initiatives  notice that you have been a consultant to our mayor and our mayor and our local paper of dr lot about the fact that we've cut down all the trees in the city of phoenix and there are very few shaded areas and if they're if you don't have shade and you're outside in the summer in arizona you're in hard you're in you're in trouble we passed legislation at the state legislative level to repaint the tops of all of our buses white you know with t about this stuff a little bit but we're thinking about it late it seems to me it's something we have to incorporate into our thinking it's pretty clear that the building materials we're using are retaining he and some of the concepts that you imagine they're not retaining water i think there's a lot of progress we can make here to try to diminish the impact of the urbanization upon kind of the environment in which we  live and improve kind of that environment dramatically so i guess i'm alone and you will await our return i guess i am to declare that the select committee is in recess until the votes on the four are concluded in about twenty minutes thank you floods in wisconsin down through iowa and missouri the drought build up bars 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 first being that there is not a centralized mission agency that can take all of this data and be able to provide to back to the other agencies as well as local regional government most refined understanding of what is occurring on the regional level secondly as someone who tries to understand what is occurring and what will occur in the future and provide that to local regional governments we rely heavily not only on local climate meterological stations but on remote sensing that being satellite images and as i indicated before of our satellites are due to expire we do not have a dedicated urban system and the refinement by that the  chairman one of the things that i'd like to draw attention to is that there's been a substantial amount of cut in the funding for some of them on many of the monitoring programs for example for the u s g s 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's happening i think is critical in addition looking at projections climate projections and then downscaling them t local and regional levels so that water utilities can make use of that information and use that in their planning and in california there is a very comprehensive effort to do that at the state level it's a program done by the california energy commission and they've pulled together a team of researchers using the same climate models the same same emissions that r e o s and are looking at impacts associated with that so doing those types of activities regionally and other states i think i think it's one of the reasons that we join together with other metropolitan cities that are searching for good research with respect to common change signs is exactly for the reason that we have many institutions sort of barging out and working on these issues independently and we feel that the federal government certainly has a role to provide us with a unified i do research on this  extremely important to ward or managers to have good data on precipitation and precipitation trends so i echo you know the sense 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're all struggling with at this point role really is in enhancing capacity at the local level to the climate climate change and climate variability presents various levels of risks and vulnerabilities to various sectors with think about agriculture you think about whatever sector you pick up you know or even our city systems it will get us cities across our cross the country you know we are vulnerable at various activities of the agencies and there are multiple amounts of agencies engaged in the climate change research and science so that's the climate change science program and i believe they're based out of no i believe it is out of know about it think as long as all these parties have a fair and there's some coordination going on so people know agencies are doing i think that would be helpful and i would also say that bill the secure think there's a difference to are talking about monitoring and looking at what is projected under climate change or we've been looking at impacts because if we're talking about impact there's going to be a lot of different agencies that are involved in that and and i would mentioned taking a bottom up vulnerability perspective in researching the impacts of climate change can you describe what is needed for this research and how the future scientific assessment such as the one recently released by the united states climate change science projections on a downscaled information that we get from this models do not sufficiently capture the understanding that we need to begin to address the question of risk and vulnerability what we need is to take a sectoral approach you know we have to do a sectoral approach we have to look at specific sectors look at water systems say for instance in small communities we'll look at health our cross the spectrum you know we'll look at i agree cultural systems you know what and then do an assessment of risk at each of each of the sec to us to do this i think everybody that we fans of the government needs to look at this question of how we as a society vulnerable when risk you some of the money that we're giving you are going to increase some of your funding to address the issue of what i addressed   many of you today highlighted the amount of water consumed by fossil fuel and nuclear energy sources has happened in your testimony i was struck by the and planning so that if we're looking at water supply we also look at what the energy implications are of that of of those water supply options another way would be through as i had testified water conservation and efficiency that is an important way to not only reduce water use but to reduce energy use and to doing so is cost effective so including measures that not only save water but save energy perhaps setting federal standards for close washers for example both consume a tremendous amount of water and energy and some of the newer versions that are on the market reduced considerably i'm also when considering energy technologies to look at what the water use are and to consider whether that's an appropriate use of our water resources in the areas that in america is that basically what we need to have twenty thirty in order to prevent the incredible consumption of water by a very narrow part of the american what does suggest some opportunities and some additional benefit that wind and solar can provide to not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions but reducing our vulnerability to water supply constraint in my written testimony i have provided a couple of newspapers headlines that talk about how water availability affects much new electricity generation and megawatts do you think we need by twenty thirty their reports have indicated that it's not agriculture it's not municipal water power there's a larger larger use of water withdrawals not consumption water withdrawals in the united states and that does 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 so what  happy to send those to you 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 renewable energy i concur with your statement my only caution is that we need to ensure that this is a base load and it can also mean a lot of people are saying that because of the high price now that it's driving up the price of natural gas and as a result we're discovering a lot more natural gas in the united states so if we use the natural gas as the base and then we build our wind and solar around it as a plan the baseload natural get out and develop partnerships with conservation groups we work with conservation groups on the farm bill to try to come up with some programs that would help in rural areas it's getting to a point right now where that's going to be the way of doing business just it's the economics are forcing agriculture i think to start to be a little bit more innovative and maybe creating partnerships with groups that we've been abas areas with in the past so those are some of the things that we're working on and i would just  trade is going to be likely no matter who is president being able to use a small portion of this resource to be able to help people to be able to cope with the disaster  could lead to a serious regression as far as water quality standards are concerned that that is certainly a possibility and for that reason we are starting to explore new strategies the new york our city of storm water as quickly as possible to our water treatment plants and when they're overwhelmed to discharge the untreated but heavily diluted waste water now what we're looking at is can we have and do we have opportunities within public rights of way and on public land to do some type of storm water management we're also looking very closely at what can you do on individual development lots one of the strategies you've heard i'm sure about are green groups but what the city of new york is currently looking at what is known as blue and they're not really picturesque it's really a tank on a roof but what it does is it has the effect of detaining storm water 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 addressed this particular 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 remaining painter of infrastructure so we have these two problems one we have not kept pace with the 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 the city has a number of reservoirs and of course the aqueduct system which runs through my district and several reservoirs in my district and other upstate districts in the one nine hundred to strict new york we've had three fifty year floods in the last five years some of the the extreme weather events that the doctor and the rest of the panel been talking about and i'm curious in terms of the delaware watershed which has experienced in particular april twenty ninth of last year the nor'easter that flooded port jervis and other communities in orange county and also my hometown of dover plains in dutchess county with the ten mile was flooding again for the third fifty year time in five year period there's been talk about whether the new york city reservoir system could be used if we knew in advance that it extreme rain event was about to happen  answer in a short amount of time but what i will say is the department has implemented a flexible flow management program and what that allows us to do is to maintain a certain void within those reza on the delaware system however the void can only be maintained when we have a certain or a more certain probability of refill so once we get past june first it's very difficult for us to maintain a void because we won't have the well at least by hind casting we won't have precipitation of vans that we can be certain so one of the other strategies that we can use is to look to make our system more robust we're bringing up filtration plant on line there and to be able to develop aqueducts that will allow further interconnectivity between the delaware system and the catskill system needs are all strategies that the department is analyzing but these are very long term strateg  thank you chairman thank you again for inviting me here today to speak i think the things i would like like you to remember today is that we are faced with challenges both from climate change as they're related to floods and droughts and from population continued population growth the good news is that we have a number of options available that are not only affective today but are effective in the future and so i would encourage the government in the legislature to go ahead and move forward and pursue these water in the west limited supplies and right now agriculture is the default reservoir to meet a lot of these new demands and we need to be thinking about our ability of a country to be self sufficient and somehow that needs find its way into the highest levels of the national policy  that ninety seconds because we need to update flood plain maps within the city of new york and to i believe we need federal partnerships to go ahead and about the business of downscaling those global