Climate change burdens roads and water systems. How can Minnesota communities adapt?

INTERVIEWER: Well, we are just a week out from the start of the 2024 legislative session here in Saint Paul. One big focus will be funding infrastructure and building projects around Minnesota. This comes as the state and federal government are spending more money than ever to help communities build up against the effects of extreme weather. That includes $35 million the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency recently announced for cities to update their stormwater systems for a changing climate.

It's the first phase of $100 million in grants that were approved by the legislature last year. Moorhead engineer Bob Zimmerman is one of the city officials around the state who are thinking about how to use those funds. And Heidi Roop is involved in this planning as the director of the University of Minnesota's Climate Adaptation Partnership. There on the line. Welcome Heidi and Bob.

HEIDI ROOP: Hi, good afternoon.

INTERVIEWER: Thanks for being here. Well, Heidi, I'll start with you. We know Minnesota, it's getting warmer and wetter. So what are the biggest climate aspects to infrastructure that we expect here in Minnesota?

HEIDI ROOP: Well, you hit the nail on the head. I think right now in this wild and weird winter, the postcards of our climate change world keep on coming. Every day look out in my backyard and think this is not normal. But those warmer wetter climate conditions that we're already experiencing in addition to what is chronic across the Midwest which is this more frequent transition between flood and drought conditions.

These are the hallmarks of our changed climate in Minnesota. And those changes bring spell trouble for our critical infrastructure. And for those scratching your head thinking, what do they mean by infrastructure? We're talking roads, bridges, water systems, stormwater systems. Many of the services and facilities that we take advantage of and take for granted every single day.

INTERVIEWER: Yeah, and the impacts of climate change are really already showing up in our day-to-day lives and all those areas that you mentioned, of our infrastructure. And so you and your colleagues actually work with city planners across the state. And what are you hearing from them in terms of their concerns?

HEIDI ROOP: Well, the big questions are how do we plan? What future do we plan for? And how do we afford the upgrades? And I think critically, how do we do it fast enough and smart enough with the uncertainty about what the future climate holds. But the very real realities that most of our communities and municipalities are low on capacity, low on resources and in many cases don't have a plan in place to account for future climate.

When we look at our publicly owned wastewater treatment and sewer systems in Minnesota, there are around 800 of them that are publicly owned. Only 6% of those facilities in our state have a plan in place to respond to the impacts of climate change. So that's only around 31 of those 800 facilities, are considering or have a plan in place to proactively attempt to manage these impacts.

INTERVIEWER: And Bob, I want to bring you in here. I know more had just had of an unusual flood warning last month and what's supposed to be the dead of winter and you deal with some spring flooding on the Red River, pretty routinely. But how could climate change impact the city's infrastructure in the future.

BOB ZIMMERMAN: Well, thanks for having me and you're absolutely right. Extremely odd situation, this past month where we had 3 inches of rain during the winter. And I have never seen that before and it really changes your focus on what do we expect as we move forward. As you mentioned we're being in the Red River Valley.

We're infamous or famous. I'm not sure which for river flooding events and have spent a lot of time working to mitigate the impacts of river flooding. But this effort is really more focused on what we call the other type of flooding. And that's where we get these very intense rainstorms, normally during the spring and summer and fall, and what that can do to infrastructure.

It's not so much the impacts just on the storm sewer, but the impacts that carry over to other infrastructure like sanitary sewer and streets and potential risks to private property and public property. So this effort is in our mind extremely, timely in that this is an issue that's been hanging out there for a long time. And I think climate change is bringing it to the forefront where we can start to deal with that and plan for it.

INTERVIEWER: Yeah. And I imagine when Bob, you work hand in hand with citizens of the area where you live all the time. You probably see really the real life effects. Some of which you mentioned but this really impacts people's daily lives.

BOB ZIMMERMAN: It sure does. And I think the state's grant program to help some of this planning get underway and now the state's program to help to start to fund some of these projects, will definitely have a real impact on people's lives. And that there are opportunities now with those resources for us to study and evaluate what we need to do. For some of these infrastructure systems that have been in place for 50, 60, maybe in some cases 100 years.

INTERVIEWER: Yeah. Heidi, I just want to zoom out a bit, what are some of the possible solutions that you all are looking at for just communities to be able to withstand some of the extreme weather and then like is it too late. I mean, is this something that could have gotten going a little bit sooner. What are your thoughts there?

HEIDI ROOP: Well, as a climate scientist of course, we would love if we had done things sooner but we are where we are and we need to get plans in place. I think that's an important starting point but certainly given the urgency and the stress on systems. And as was mentioned, the many of our stormwater systems and other critical infrastructure are reaching the end of what we call their useful life, so are in need of upgrades.

I think the main thing we need to think about as we do any of these investments, small or large in any form of infrastructure is that we're factoring future climate into the design of this infrastructure. A lot of folks say well, that's so expensive. There are of course costs to system failure. Not just financial, but on communities and the health and well-being of our communities. There's impacts on Commerce and the economy.

So I think what are the solutions? There's planning. There's partnering in ways that make sure that say organizations like mine are providing useful and usable science where it's most needed, so that you can size systems appropriately for a future climate. And I think there are a range of different solutions in combination that think about how we not only upgrade our infrastructure, but bring co-benefits like tree plantings and green roofs.

Thinking about permeable pavement. Other strategies that say keep water out of our stormwater and wastewater systems, but in the ground and serving our landscapes and ecosystems. So there's a whole range of things and we also know in our state for every dollar invested in natural climate solutions like those I mentioned, we can receive a benefit of around $8.55 by mid-century. And that's from a study produced by the nature conservancy last year.

INTERVIEWER: And what do you see as some of the barriers to making those types of solutions happen?

HEIDI ROOP: Well, I think as I said before, there are a lot of gaps both in budgets and staffing, and time. You're saying make a plan is actually a very large undertaking, making a plan that factors in future climate risk. Probably even a further challenge. I know Bob can speak to the efforts that they've gone through to actually do this planning to position themselves for implementation. But really it's access to information, but critically funding.

Even if you know what parts of your system are failing, where are the resources to proactively manage those risks and how do we spread that over time. Very few communities can rip up all their roads and stormwater systems but how do we get things in place to do iterative upgrades and resizing of our infrastructure for our climate change future.

INTERVIEWER: Yeah. It's a lot to tackle and it impacts everybody. Bob I don't know if you communicate with people from other Cities who are in a similar role as you, but what do you all talk about or what advice do you give one another?

BOB ZIMMERMAN: Well, I think the approach is maybe changing a little bit from what it might have been years ago where before. And we do now. We have a very detailed computer model of our system and we can run different events and look at the flooding that takes place throughout the city. And years ago, we might have approached a problem like this and just said, well, we have street flooding. That's a problem, we just need to upsize the pipe. Put a bigger pipe in.

Well, as Heidi mentioned, that's really expensive and probably not manageable. So we change the focus now to what is the risk? So OK, we have a big rain event. The storm sewer can't handle all of that rain for a period of time. We have some street flooding. What's the risk associated with that? In this particular location does it affect a home or a public structure? Does it actually cause damage to that structure?

Or is it in this particular intersection. Maybe it's a short term flooding. Maybe an hour or 2, the intersections flooded. Almost think about it like a blizzard in a sense. When a blizzard comes, we stay off the roads and we're inconvenienced for a few hours but we don't necessarily have damage. Well, in this case if we can manage the risk to those places where we do have damage then we can try to approach it at the most reasonable cost. I mean, it's still going to be costly.

But at least we can focus our efforts a little bit better.

INTERVIEWER: And lastly, just Heidi, are there any specific areas of the state that you point toward the most or have the most concern about? Does it have to do with maybe how close you are to different bodies of water?

HEIDI ROOP: That's a good question. I think every part of the state is facing its own combination of climate risks. We have hundreds of thousands of facilities and roads and commercial buildings at risk of flooding alone as just isolating one impact. So I think-- I worry about everywhere. But if I were to hone in, I think one of the things we need to really factor in as we think about how we resource communities, how we make sure there's sufficient implementation dollars and planning, is that our smaller communities across the state often carry a heavy burden for system failures and system upgrades.

INTERVIEWER: Sure.

HEIDI ROOP: So if you think infrastructure is above your pay grade, just know that the costs of climate change on our infrastructure are often borne by us, ratepayers and taxpayers. And so that is especially true in the absence of proactive state and municipal investments. So I think we need to be thinking critically about how we resource our smaller communities because the burden of actually having facilities is often borne disproportionately by those communities when it comes down to dollars and cents.

INTERVIEWER: Thank you for that. Bob Zimmerman, Moorhead city engineer and Heidi Roop, director of the University of Minnesota's Climate Adaptation Partnership. Thank you both so much for your work and for coming on.

HEIDI ROOP: Thank you.

BOB ZIMMERMAN: Thank you.