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Water Planning Committee Meeting Summary May 10, 2021 Webinar–Intern Report on Selected Water Plans for Drought and Climate Inclusion–Aislinn McLaughlin

  1. Call to Order—Chair Jennifer Hoggatt-Missouri DNR called to order at 10:03 a.m. Central. 
  • Introductions of Participants on the call:  Jennifer Hoggatt, Chair; Sue Lowry; Aislinn McLaughlin; Carrie Wiese; Dan Miller; Ed Swaim; Jennifer Schellpeper; John Boyer; Julie Westerlund; Kristina Peacock-Jones; Linwood Peele; Mark Matlock; Vardry Austin

Aislinn has finished first year of graduate school at Duke.  Project with Internship at ICWP this spring was to look at a sample of state water plans to see if had climate or drought stand-alone plans or were incorporated into their state water plan.  Reviewed 11 states and 2 interstate plans.  Difference between states and nomenclature of climate vs climate change.  Drought, flood, climate change event focused.  All  states had drought section or stand alone.  Mixture of doing the work in-house by states or use of outside consultants.  Didn’t find any “boiler-plate” as such wide variability in how states complete their water planning.  Correlation of extreme events and climate variability/change.  Stakeholders want the plan to address these issues and let the politicos know that.  

Report should be completed and on the ICWP webpage by the end of May. 

  • Water Planning topics from Roundtable presentations—Due to large number of registrants for the Roundtable, ICWP will likely keep meetings hybrid as begin to meet face to face.  
  • Report out of other ICWP committee activities—Sue recapped the activities of the other 3 committees. 
  • Topics and speakers for future water planning learning opportunities—asking Mindi Dalton to provide more detail on the Water Use modeling at the USGS is high priority.  Asking Joe Manous for update on USACE IWR would also be a good topic. Julie Westerlund mentioned that the Minnesota Water Plan has a direct link to climate issues, and she would be happy to get us lined up with a speaker to give more detail. 
  • Additional items to add to 2021 committee workplan
    • On last meeting– discussion of innovative funding approaches and North Dakota and Colorado were suggested as possible speakers

General discussion:  good support by legislature for flood recovery project.  $5M addition for flood planning resiliency. So. Carolina have added hurricane and flood response in addition to the drought planning.  Statewide resiliency plan.  Reviewing states for those who have a Resiliency plan might be good project.

WRDA2020 Implementation—MO and UMRBA both submitted comments by the USACE deadline.  

  • Next call or webinar—set date—Sue was asked to contact Mindi Dalton, USGS to provide more detail on the water use/water availability modeling efforts that Mindi discussed during the Roundtable.  See if Mindi is available June 21; July 12 is backup date. 

Water Planning Committee:  Provide a forum of the exchange of ideas and concepts related to state and regional water planning. 

2019/20 Accomplishments:

  • Webinars from several state planning efforts
  • Contributed Planning topics/speakers for Annual Meeting and Washington DC Roundtable

Issues for 2021 Workplan

  1. Continue with Webinar presentations from individual states on their water planning programs
  2. Support for PAS
  3. Water Quality and Infrastructure—how ICWP might integrate these topics with our main mission topic areas
  4. Planning topics at 2021 Washington Roundtable and Annual Fall Meeting
  5. Funding approaches used by various states:
    1. North Dakota
    1. Washington
    1. Colorado
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