 Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to this afternoon's briefing. My name is Carol Werner and I'm the executive director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. This afternoon's briefing is on the topic of how can the federal government help prepare local communities for natural disasters. In this afternoon's briefing, we're going to be led through a discussion of the recommendations and the dialogue that occurred as a result of a task force that had been organized at the behest of the White House entitled the State, Local, and Tribal Leaders Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience. This bipartisan task force was comprised of 26 governors, mayors, tribal leaders and other officials who spent a year compiling recommendations on how the federal government could best provide the kind of responsive assistance that local communities felt that they needed in order to be more resilient to the impacts of climate change that they were already seeing as well as those that are being projected. Throughout that year process that this task force came together met and then compiled a report and they came forward with more than 500 recommendations, which they then whittled down to about 35 very specific recommendations. Throughout this whole thing, at different times, we had occasion to be in conversation with gubernatorial offices as well as a couple mayors who had spoken at EESI briefings on resilience topics last year. Throughout this process, I was always struck by the great seriousness and dedication that these state and local leaders were bringing to this very important topic because of what they saw as the very real impacts that they were already dealing with, their concerns about how best to protect their citizens, their communities, public health and property and businesses and their local economies in terms of dealing with the kinds of disasters that they had been experiencing. And as we know, I think over 47 states have had presidentially declared national disasters in the last couple years. And so this is something that is very real, that people at the local level in terms of state and local leaders are having to deal with in very real time. And of course, the greater the amount of tools and knowledge and experience that they have and that they can glean from their peers, it means the more effective that people can be in terms of really protecting and making their communities much more resilient to these kinds of natural disasters. So we are going to hear from three people who are very involved throughout this year-long task force exercise and they are now very much involved in terms of working with their colleagues and their elected leaders in terms of the implementation and execution of a number of these recommendations. And we will first hear from Sam Ricketts, who is the director of the Washington office, the governor of Washington state office. So Sam is the director of Governor Jay Inslee's D.C. office here, where he is Governor Inslee's chief liaison with Congress, with federal agencies, and the national and western governor's associations. He advises the governor and Washington state agencies with regard to federal policy as it affects Washington state and works on federal action for those, for the governor's federal policy priorities. Before serving with Governor Inslee, Sam also was the executive director of the U.S. House Sustainable Energy and Environmental Coalition called SEEK, which is a caucus that had been formed by then Congressman Jay Inslee and Congressman Steve Israel to promote clean energy and climate action. Sam? Thank you very much Carol and good afternoon everybody. Thanks Carol for putting on this event. Thanks for all for being here to discuss this important topic and thanks to EESI for its always excellent work. I look forward to participating. So just a quick note about myself, my work, I'm Governor Inslee's Washington D.C. office guy. I'm the governor's federal facing liaison out here based in Washington D.C., handling federal affairs for the governor and for state government, sitting at the intersection of federal policy that affects the state and vice versa. In this role I participated as one of Governor Inslee's primary points on the climate task force that the president convened and I'll say a word about that in a second. Quickly a background on the White House climate task force of the recommendations we're going to discuss today. The genesis of this came out of the president's climate action plan that he of course announced in the summer of 2013 was to set up this task force that led to a November 2013 executive order creating the task force and that led into the selection of members in that fall in the first meeting December 2013. As Carol mentioned there were 26 members on the task force, 8 governors, 14 mayors, a couple of tribal officials and a couple of county officials from all over the country, all with varying degrees of perspectives on climate resilience, all with very perspectives on how the climate change is impacting their jurisdictions but all with a very real appreciation for climate change being a reality and very much affecting their jurisdictions. It was a fascinating exercise as Carol mentioned. It was a year long liberation that the officials met four different times here in DC once in Iowa and once in LA and talked through a world of different recommendations and ideas they had for how the federal government could do a better job. The charter of the task force was to have these officials give direct recommendations to federal agencies on better ways they can promote investments, programs, regulations that better take into account resilience and help states and locals themselves better prepare for and build resilience to climate change. And as I mentioned each of these jurisdictions is dealing with this. This wasn't an abstract or overly academic, I mean it was certainly a comprehensive exercise but it wasn't an abstract exercise. These are officials who are dealing with public safety, emergency preparedness, wildfire response, disease control, zoning laws, infrastructure, vulnerabilities, and they're all already seeing climate change impact and have pretty serious costs in their jurisdictions so they all come to the table and say hey we've got these costs we've got to deal with, we've got these outdated regulations we need to have be more flexible to climate change and it made for a very interesting series of discussions. And I think it ended up being a terrific work product. As was mentioned I think there was initially 500 recommendations that were boiled down into 35 concrete recommendations with some sub recommendations under each and those recommendations fit into seven themes throughout the document and are organized under sort of five guiding principles that you'll see inculcated throughout each of them. I really encourage everyone to take a look at this. Each of us talk about various elements of the recommendations that came out but by and large we're not going to get a chance to dive through the entire document and I really do for policy makers and for those here in D.C. and in the states and local government to take a look at this document and what it can provide. I think that federal agencies are doing a very good job now working to implement these recommendations but this is a policy roadmap and I encourage all of you to take a deeper dive into these pieces there are. You can spend a lot of time with just each one of these recommendations figuring out the various different ways that it can and should be implemented. A quick word about climate change impacts in the Evergreen state, the state of Washington. We are already experiencing pretty serious and economically environmentally devastating climate change impacts in the state of Washington. A few of them, these costs of which are already been projected to exceed about ten million dollars a year to the state economy by 2020. A few of them wildfires are becoming more devastating each fire season. Last year we had our worst wildfire in state history. Wildfires are anticipated to burn about twice as many acres as they do annually right now in the state of Washington by the 2020s and maybe quadruple the acreage by the 2040s. It's pretty serious direct impacts from wildfires. Water supply and flooding. Washington state is interesting in that the state is bisected by the Cascade Mountains and on the west side of the state it's very wet. You all know Seattle and rain. We're actually going to be seeing increasing precipitation on the west side of the state. So we're going to see increased flooding. We're already seeing increased flooding. We've already got communities who've been dealing with flooding for a long time. We're going to be seeing more of it. We're going to be seeing more mudslides. We're going to be seeing, you all recall, a very serious and very devastating, very tragic mudslide last spring in Osso and Snomers County, Washington. We're going to be seeing all sorts of issues that come with greater precipitation on the west side of the state, while on the east side of the state, traditionally the dry, arid side of the state, it's only going to get more so. The projected declines in Cascade Snowpack are going to lead to water supply problems. And that could have, of course, that as you've seen this year in California and Nevada is having all sorts of impacts on agriculture, municipal water supply and the like. Also, we've got a robust shellfish industry in the state of Washington. We've got a great coastline. We've got the country's first or second largest estuary, depending on how you measure it, in Puget Sound, our shellfish industry is responsible for about $270 million in economic activity in the state each year. Increasing acidity levels in our coastal waters are actually already having pretty significant impacts on our shellfish industry. We've had shellfish growers have to move oyster larvae growing operations out of the state. We had some locate to Hawaii because in parts of Puget Sound, the oysters are not actually able to form their shells because the acidity levels are too high. I'm actually wearing an oyster shell on my lapel here today. That's a direct economic impact from climate change that we've got to start getting around. Ocean acidification is an issue that I think all three, or Washington and California, certainly prioritized in their membership on the task force and others did as well. Certainly, Washington State Governor Inslee feel we need to take action on climate change both on resilience, but also obviously on reducing the emissions that are, the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving climate change. We've also had a history of leadership on resilience in the state. Our State Department of Ecology in 2012 published a comprehensive statewide strategy for climate change resilience. Our State Department of Transportation using federal grant money actually has conducted a statewide evaluation of vulnerabilities from climate change to our transportation assets. Our emergency management department has had eyes on this and then a number of our local communities, City of Seattle has been a leader at the municipal level on climate resilience. So we came to this with a lot of background. Our intention was to share a lot of what we've done and what we know, what we've learned in our efforts with our sister states and cities and also with the federal government to better shape federal policy. So we bring into the table a series of priorities. One, and I think, again, I just stated this, but I want to restate it. I think the first most important federal policy action that needs must be taken right now on climate change is to reduce the carbon pollution that is driving it. We can build all sorts of resilience capacity. We can adapt all we want. Ultimately, at the pace of emissions right now, we're not going to be able to adapt enough. We need to cut the thing off at the problem. So looking at ways to reduce carbon pollution while also looking at resilience is vitally important and I know the governor and our team tried to focus also on ways that we could do both. There's a series of strategies that have dual benefits. You can, by building more distributed, cleaner energy systems, using combined heat and power, using solar, you can actually have a more resilient grid like we saw in New York City and parts of Jersey when Superstorm Sandy came through. But you've also been building cleaner energy systems which are not polluting as much. You can have better forest management practices that are helping to prevent filed fires and the great carbon and other pollutant emissions that come from those fires while also helping to sequester carbon out of the atmosphere. So we also, we've got, we prioritize making sure that local and state governments have tools and resources and coordination that they need with the federal partners to continue to build on their resilience efforts and I'll get to more of that in a second. We've, we talked about promoting more resilient investments versus investing in things that are no longer contributing to resilience. And then we again prioritize to focus on ocean acidification. I think states each broadly and I mentioned each jurisdiction has slightly different problems but numerous different states brought various different ideas to the table. Vermont had all sorts of really instructive lessons learned from its response and recovery from Hurricane Irene. Maryland has been doing wonderful work with sea level rise and storm surge and their statewide policy making. Hawaii and actually the territory of Guam both came to the table with very important recommendations for that are unique obviously to islands in the Pacific. Some of which are pretty darn low to sea level. So again getting quickly specifically to the recommendations. I don't kind of want to go over these quickly and talk about some of the main principles that are overarching themes and then some of the specifics and where, where agencies stand and where they're going next and I know my colleagues will likely expand upon these as well. I get five overarching principles that are inculcated throughout this. One require consideration of climate risks and vulnerabilities in all federal policies and practices. Seems like a significant undertaking it is seems like it also should be common sense and it is. That is an overarching principle. Two and I spoke to this maximizing opportunities for dual benefits climate resilience and greenhouse gas emissions. Three strengthen coordination and partnerships between federal agencies who are doing various siloed things on climate resilience but also between federal agencies and with states and locals. There's still strong bridges to be built there. Provide actionable data and information on climate impacts and related tools and we'll get to the definition of actionable in a little bit and then consult and cooperate with tribes which is a vital piece of this tribes of Tribal nations throughout Washington throughout the country are uniquely vulnerable to climate change. So quickly does seven main themes of the recommendations. I'll try to just give a quick example of each. One building resilient communities and incorporating climate change considerations into traditional programs to rethink their approach. A good example is to develop and encourage adoption of resilience standards and inciting and design of buildings and infrastructure should at least be done. The federal government itself can lead the way as a first mover there to improving resilience of infrastructure, climate smart, coastal and water infrastructure, use of green infrastructure and mentioned clean energy systems by having the federal government remove some of the roadblocks to property assess clean energy financing. We can again build some of those you tap into a private investment to build some more distributed and cleaner and resilient energy systems. We're ensuring the resilience of natural resources. Natural resources are obviously vital to the environments and public health in our state and also just particularly in the state of Washington. We have the best and most beautiful natural resources. We need to protect those and they have their own economic benefits. We need to combat invasive species, integrated watershed management that looks at the whole river system, looks at the whole estuary and not just a piece of it. Number four, preserving human health and supporting resilient populations. A good example is building on CDC's climate ready states and cities initiative. Again, there's already good authorities and programs out there that need to be further invested in or built upon. Five, supporting climate smart mitigation and disaster preparedness efforts. As I mentioned, some of the disasters and hazards that are facing the state of Washington. Each state and local jurisdiction probably has a little different unique hazards facing them that are being furthered by climate change, but we need to remove barriers to rebuilding smarter in a smarter way. I know Vermont had great examples of federal barriers they ran into when they tried to rebuild from Irene in a more climate smart way and they couldn't because FEMA was telling them that wasn't compliant with the Stafford Act. Six, understanding and acting on the economics of resilience. There's a number of partners who need to be involved and more deeply engaged. Insurance industry is an example of one of them who has been engaged and the federal government can better collaborate with them. Seven, and finally, building capacity for resilience. Give states and locals better info or maybe not give them better info, help them have the resources to better understand info that's out there or to create the information themselves and I'll touch on this. Now we're again shifting to implementation. I just gave you a very brief overview of the overall recommendations. I do encourage you everyone to dive into the document itself. CEQ is leading implementation. They've been the driving force on the report and they're the driving force with federal agencies on implementation. Each individual agency or a number of them have been tasked with pursuing implementation of pieces that have fallen to their jurisdiction and they're obviously also having these conversations through the federal interagency climate resilience task force. But a few of the pieces that have been particularly of note last week FEMA announced that states from here out need to consider climate change as a part of their state hazard mitigation plan. Every state submits a FEMA hazard mitigation plan that needs to be approved. Until now only I think about 11 or 12 states that actually incorporated climate change considerations into their plans. FEMA is saying that's not good enough anymore. Again, this seems like common sense and it is, but people hadn't been doing it. So FEMA with the urging of this task force is now making that official. To CEQ is finally moving to finalize the guidance that it had been working on for some years on how federal agencies need to incorporate climate change impacts and also greenhouse gas emissions from projects under NEPA review under the National Environmental Policy Act. Again, it seems to make sense that the country's overarching national environmental policy, NEPA, which has been around since the early 1970s, should incorporate climate change and greenhouse gas emissions in its reviews. But again, it wasn't in place. And so now CEQ is moving to finalize that guidance, which I think they should be doing in the coming months. Again, at the urging of Governor Inslee and at the urging of this task force. HUD is out with its national climate resilience or national disaster resilience competition, a billion dollar opportunity for states and counties to take advantage of as they seek to look at past disasters and build resilience towards future disaster, particularly with an eye towards climate change. There are other pieces of this, particularly in the West, the WGA at Governor Inslee's urging and stemming from this task force also is taking a look at wildfires. Western states are being eaten alive by wildfires, not just in Washington, but across the West. And we're increasingly talking amongst each other and with FEMA about looking at better ways that FEMA and federal agencies can provide support for recovery and response and long-term recovery for communities impacted by wildfires. But there's plenty more to be done. Most recommendations had an eye towards executive action. I think you can all appreciate why, but goodness knows there's plenty of work here. We are here in the Senate and there's plenty of work that Congress can be doing. One thing is investment. A lot of the programs already exist and they just need to be better funded. But Congress can play a vital role again in digging through this report and finding ways of furthering the work of the agencies or pushing agencies to do better on climate resilience. One key thing that I want to get to and I mentioned we talk about actionable is not rebuilding the wheel. And this was something that our team tried to bring to the table a lot through these conversations. We in the state of Washington have done a lot of work to invest in climate resilience and understanding how climate change is impacting the Evergreen state. We've created the University of Washington Climate Impact Group, which is a phenomenal group housed in one of the state's public universities that has been understanding these impacts and actually boiling down to a very specific level in counties and local jurisdictions about how climate change is impacting the state and its communities. So we don't always just need there to be new platforms put forward, new hubs announced, but rather to find better ways of understanding what the individual communities actually need and what influences their decisions on things that climate change would affect and then meet the needs and help people understand how they can use these tools. So what is actionable? And I think that's the point of the task force in this report is figuring out what local communities are actually going to need in order to build community resilience plans or in order to simply make better decisions about how to site zones and how to prepare for climate change. It's better info, I think we still need better info on what info local communities and states are looking for, but that is a top-down as well as a bottom-up partnership. Again, looking at current authorities, there are a host of programs that are already out there that can be tweaked or worked better, Staff Redacted FEMA, the Coastal Zone Management Act, that can be used or expanded upon to work, to better address climate change and then more education. We need to get out there, we need to be talking with, you know, the federal government is a great liaison through each of its agencies of getting into the communities of whether it's executive leadership of state agencies, of municipal agencies, of county agencies, and explaining, hey, this is the climate impacts that are coming to your region. If you want to know which ones are coming to your particular town, we should probably have a longer conversation, but, you know, start getting wise on this stuff because it's coming, it's already here in many places and it's becoming very costly. So this has been a terrific undertaking. I know the governor was very appreciative of the opportunity to serve on the president's task force. I think it provided us with opportunity to learn a lot from our sister states and we hope vice versa. Now we look forward to continuing to work with the federal agencies on continued implementation of the recommendations. So thank you, Carol. Thanks everyone for being here. We're now going to turn to Dr. Jennifer Horado, who is the director of environmental planning and community resilience for Broward County, Florida. Dr. Horado was deeply involved in helping with the staffing of this task force and in supporting elected members from the four county area with which he's been specifically working in Florida. Dr. Horado is responsible for the development and administration of countywide environmental programs and climate resiliency initiatives for Broward County, Florida specifically. And within that, primary focal areas include regional climate mitigation and adaptation, water resource policy, planning and management, shoreline protection and marine resources, conservation and management. Since joining Broward County in 2002, Jennifer has worked on and has overseen multi-jurisdictional initiatives focused on water resource protection, alternative water supply planning and the development of advanced hydrologic models and comprehensive planning efforts with an emphasis on climate resilience and adaptation planning for sea level rise. Now I wanted to go through and read each of these issue areas because they are all areas that were very important to the task force and obviously they are very important to the area that Jennifer is working in in Florida. She also played a lead role in the creation of the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact which is a four county commitment to work regionally on climate mitigation and adaptation strategies. And this has been going on for a while because of the concerns from local leaders about what they were seeing in Southeast Florida and the need to address it. And in fact, I wanted to call to your attention an article that was in the front section of the Washington Post today which is really discussing this four state compact, regional compact in Florida and why it exists and some of the actions that are being taken and the concerns of local citizens that this compact is really trying to address. And what was so important was all of the information and experience that people working on this compact were able to feed in to this task force because while Southeast Florida is dealing with some very unique and special problems, some of them are also being seen other places and they also bring a whole lot of experience with regard to having to think about how to best plan and manage these kinds of really difficult situations. So let's now turn to Jennifer. Thank you Carol very much for the introduction and for the opportunity to participate in this important panel conversation. I'll admit that my role really was a support role to our former Broward County Commissioner Kristen Jacobs who's been a tremendous advocate for climate resiliency initiatives and I had a great pleasure of working with her for a number of years. She was the co-chair of the Built Systems Work Group to the task force and so we provided direct staffing to the activities there that included transportation, water, energy, built environment and we later added a sector that was specifically coastal infrastructure because we felt that the unique circumstances of our coastal communities really warranted a very focused discussion in that area and we took significant ownership of that particular issue but we also had the benefit of coming into the task force process again with many years of real active engagement and an acknowledgement of how difficult it had been to arrive at the point that we were. I think that collectively we feel as if we really have gained great advantage from federal partnerships and from regional collaborations that have allowed us to accelerate our planning process but we've also appreciated that there's a very significant divide to overcome when you're moving from the general policy concepts and planning initiatives to the true types of investments that need to take place in our communities in order to begin to realize the benefits of climate resiliency and so we had that perspective to share and I think it was one that was also really well articulated by many of the members of the working group and task force itself as they we were all at kind of varying levels of readiness and really appreciating the very importance of federal leadership particularly in communities where we may not have in South Florida we've got very strong engagement in Southeast Florida we may not have that same engagement at the state level and thus the types of recommendations that would come from the task force report could end up providing very strong incentives and perhaps some baseline information that could begin to elevate all of our communities across our state and across our country not just those that had had the advantage of early participation in action. So what I'd like to do is begin by just kind of telling a little bit of the South Florida circumstance because as Carol was expressing this has been a reality that has been well observed by our residents by our business leaders by our elected officials both Democrat and Republican and our initiatives have been very reflective of bipartisan collaborations within our counties and across the four county region. For a little bit of orientation Broward County is just north of Miami in Miami-Dade County I know most tend to focus on the very southern port tip of our state but we're Broward in the middle of the two larger counties there. We have a coastline of about 23 miles we have a population of about 1.8 million we have 25 water utilities about an equal number of wastewater treatment facilities we've got an international port and airport the port has about 20 billion dollars in economic activity in a year the beach and our coastal resources support another 10 billion dollars in economic activity three feet of sea level rise we have about 6 billion in infrastructure that is vulnerable we have about 30 percent of our landscape at an elevation of five feet or less and we're very densely developed and we're squeezed or sandwiched between two very important natural systems the Everglades to our west which is protected and is not an area of retreat and of course our coastal waters to the east so it's a very unique environment with very significant vulnerabilities by virtue of our landscape and our topography we also have another kind of confounding factor which is 1,800 miles of canals that provide drainage and flood control for our community so the entire functionality of that system is dependent on the ability to move water with gravity from west to east and as sea level rises we have the reduced capacity for discharges to the east and that means that climate resilience and issues of sea level rise are not just isolated to the coastal fringe but they translate across our entire community with very significant flood and water supply implications and the other element that I would like to raise early as well is that it's not just a matter of sea level rise influences as we look at storm surge or overtopping of seawalls and I'll share some of those pictures but it's also about water coming up from beneath our feet because our geology is very porous it's limestone we don't have a granite or basalt foundation that keeps seawater at bay we're actually seeing rises in groundwater elevations in our coastal areas we've seen more than a foot rise in groundwater elevation and when you only have five feet of separation between your surface and your groundwater that's your flood protection so you're losing 20% of the flood protection with a foot of sea level or groundwater rise beneath our feet and it has implications for water supply so I'll share with you some of these graphics and I know that many have observed the images of high tide events but you can truly see how dramatic this is there is absolutely no distinction between a waterway and your roadway this is the type of flooding that occurs multiple times a year for several days at a time this last year high tide events started early we saw them in August running all the way through December this causes water to backflow into people's homes up through the sanitary sewer systems as there's a massive inflow in through the plumbing there's massive inflow through stormwater infrastructure communities that are not immediately adjacent to waterways have the same vulnerabilities we see backflow through for this type of stormwater infrastructure that's designed to move rainfall off the landscape it ends up serving as a mechanism whereby tidal waters can flow inland so this is salt water flooding on a piece of property that is not waterfront and we also have communities that can be several miles inland as it happened two years ago with a nominal rainfall event they have no, I'm sure you know waterfront property within any usable distance and yet they had massive flooding two feet of standing water on their landscape as a result of a high tide because there was simply no movement in the stormwater infrastructure and it all accumulated in these basins so this interconnection of water management infrastructure is what keeps our community dry but it's also what makes the community vulnerable under sea level rise the issues also relate to extreme weather events we get a lot of rainfall in South Florida about 58 inches a year but we can't hold it all we're built out, we're flat we don't have major reservoirs we don't have the storage capacity so flooding is a real issue and increasingly we're seeing major events one in a hundred year events, one in 500 year events last year we had two one in a thousand year rainfall events in the state of Florida one was in Palm Beach County 14 inches of rain in three hours people, you know, loss of life with drowning we had in the Palm Beach example it was 22 inches of rain in a day and obviously that's it's about a, you know, a fifth of the rainfall that we would generally receive in the entire year and it can't be used where we don't have adequate pumps to move 18 inches of rain in a day we have had standing flooding as in the picture on the left two weeks that this community looked like that and in the city of Hollywood this picture this was flooding overnight people went in to their girlfriends home for a book reading club and they came out and their cars had washed down the street and these are happening increasingly during the dry season when it's not supposed to be raining and this is more characteristic of the type of condition you'd expect in a tropical storm we're also seeing increased impacts to infrastructure South Florida did not have a direct hit from Sandy but the onshore prevailing winds coupled with extreme high tide eroded the beaches so we didn't have any buffer when the next winter storm came through that consisted of onshore winds and high tide and overnight we had four blocks of A1A which is an emergency evacuation route collapsed and the restoration of this project was about 24 million dollars just four blocks and we did end up building back with resiliency we raised the road we pushed the road back we reduced the number of lanes we created additional buffers we put in beach dunes all of the necessary elements of resiliency when you're trying to maintain an emergency evacuation route but it really did underscore the type of impacts that we see with rising seas and we've experienced about 9 inches of sea level rise in South Florida in the last 90 years this next picture shows an issue that relates to water supply and this is something that individuals many individuals are not cognizant of regularly because miraculously water just derives at our homes but in Broward County we have a severe issue relating to salt water intrusion many will argue well that's because you've overutilized the resource but it's really not the case I mean clearly there are significant water demands that have contributed to that over the time but our withdrawals from the aquifer have been capped since 2006 we have partnered with the USGS in very advanced hydrologic modeling to ascertain the amount of salt water intrusion that's attributed to sea level rise it's accelerated the movement by about a factor of two and based upon a unified sea level rise projection that we've collectively agreed to use in our region for planning purposes we anticipate that we will lose about 35 million gallons per day of water supply capacity by about 2060 that's about 40% of our coastal capacity and that's important because all of the treatment facilities associated with that water supply you know they're adjacent to the sources so this type of issue requires it's between 300 and 400 million dollars to rectify if we're able to count on the same water source being available if we're moving to alternative water supplies it's quite a bit more costly and so we're looking at regional water initiatives to help address that type of vulnerability but it's also important in our conversations to recognize that while that's the reality in 2050 it's a gradually eroding of capacity we don't lose the wells overnight and we don't have the flooding impacts only realize at a future point in time it's a gradual eroding of drainage capacity water supply capacity increased storm events that all create these additional vulnerabilities and it's not just Broward, we share a common landscape with southeast Florida and we began to appreciate the magnitude of investments that were being made across our communities that led all four of our counties to come together with the determination to share the expertise, share the investments develop more robust planning tools and strategies than if we were working individually and also ideally position ourselves better for partnerships with the federal government because we knew that those resources couldn't come down and benefit each of the 110 cities in our four county area but with four counties with a population of nearly 6 million we account for a third of our state's economy it was more of a pressing and prominent voice calling for resource support we agreed to collaborate in climate and energy policy at the state and federal levels to develop common planning tools such as the unified sea level rise projection and vulnerability maps and so forth to inform our planning decisions also greenhouse gas emissions inventories we agreed to develop a regional action plan which was produced, it was finalized in 2012 it's been adopted by all four of our counties unanimously by our bipartisan boards it's been embraced by our cities about a third of our cities in the four county area and this is Palm Beach, Broward, Miami, Dayton, Monroe County, Monroe is the Florida Keys they formally signed on with support for the southeast Florida regional climate change compact implementation of the action plan and even more cities are actually implementing the recommendations and participating even though maybe a resolution has not been adopted in the fourth area of collaboration has been annual hosting of climate summits and then in those situations we have elected leadership from all four of the counties, our city managers, business communities environmental interests, academic partners all come together for this comprehensive conversation about what's happening in our environment, how is planning being advanced and what needs to happen next and we rotate those conversations in terms of each of the counties hosting and participating and as a result of working together we've been able to maximize benefits we have benefited with the USGS the Department of Energy, EPA, they're all detailed here that have brought technical expertise to our processes but it isn't just what's happening in the four counties we know it's a strong alignment with our federal agency and state partners and then the implementation at the local level where so much of the investments need to be made and that's really where the task force report comes into play we know that we've been able to gain significant advantage because of the partnerships that have been enjoyed many of our communities have not had that same benefit they don't have the resources, they don't know where to start they don't know what's the best data and so much of this conversation was how can we use the federal expertise and the investments and the competency that's available bring it back to local governments, bring actionable and scalable information we can't just use the projections from the National Climate Assessment what does it mean in my community and then one of the other conversations was well the federal government clearly can't be in all places at all times how can we incentivize regional participation and collaborations and since then I think that we've seen a number of investments that are coming forward, initiatives and programs that are being structured and scaled to provide that type of incentive we've had the climate data centers that were announced during this process designed to help bring actionable information to communities support for agriculture we had the Climate Action Champions Award that was announced that was clearly established to allow and encourage regional collaborations it's really about also ensuring that the information that is being provided can help guide state policy as well and it's not while the resources are critical at the local level local governments are also precluded from doing a great deal by virtue of state policy so how can the federal government encourage states to take a more proactive stand and align their processes with the progressive planning and the type of accountability that's prevalent throughout the local governments but needs to be more and better supported by all of the variety of state investments so the task force report and the recommendations that we've seen evolve as of late including the flood standards are very important we've expressed support for those flood standards for the clean carbon rule for natural systems infrastructure that's advanced by principles advanced by the EPA the NEPA guidance that incorporates climate mitigation and adaptation are all critical mechanisms for ensuring that climate resiliency is part of programs that federal programs are expanded to directly support and require climate resilient investments and they're broadened in a manner that are more responsive and modern to the types of challenges that we're realizing today that there's a great deal that needs to be enhanced so we look forward to continuing to see the roll out of the executive orders that are supporting implementation of the recommendations that are really advanced out of a great need and a realization that the federal government has a responsibility and local governments have a need for the expertise and partnerships that will collectively advance resiliency and protect our communities and our economies and hopefully South Florida serves as a really good model of how we can be more effective in working at those levels and scales of collaboration through local government and state and federal and I don't know about you but I'm glad you're there working on all of this because that situation looks already very, very overwhelming in terms of the challenges that are having to be dealt with by by local communities and their leadership. So we're now going to turn to another representative of local government to Caroline Burnt who is the program director for sustainability at the National League of Cities where she is part of the federal advocacy team leading NLC's advocacy regulatory and policy efforts on energy and environmental issues that include water infrastructure in financing air and water quality, climate change and energy efficiency. And of course the National League of Cities is the oldest and largest organization representing municipal governments. The task force included several mayors including Mayor Ralph Becker who is the mayor of Salt Lake City and who is also the current president or chairman of the National League of Cities. And so there were, as I said, several mayors that were part of the task force including the leadership of NLC and Caroline is going to speak to us a little bit more specifically about what the task force recommendations, what dealing with resilience and preparation means for local governments for cities. Thanks Carol and happy to be here today and thank you all for joining us. Yes, as Carol mentioned NLC works, we serve as a resource and advocate for about 19,000 cities and towns. We work through 49 state municipal leagues and representing really about 218 million Americans. Sustainability is one of the key issues for NLC both in federal advocacy and in our research team where we have the NLC Sustainable Cities Institute with best practices, model policies and ordinances and research on the various topics within sustainability. So really as we've heard local governments are seeing the effects of climate change and extreme weather and they're taking action. And of course there are regional differences to the impacts. Here you have the two extremes on water quality and supply. We know climate change will exacerbate existing water challenges and create new challenges for local governments and communities. Local governments are leading the way on energy efficiency, sustainable infrastructure, water management really need the federal support to amplify these programs and that's where the recommendations come in. Specifically I think broadly local governments are looking for help with capacity building, help with regional coordination and planning, disaster planning and response and resources and tools and data to help with vulnerability assessments, decision making, developing and implementing long-term mitigation, adaptation, resilience plans. And so why do local governments care about the task force recommendations? Local governments are the first responders to emergency situations. They prepare in advance of emergencies, they respond to those in need and they're there for the recovery process. I want to spend a little bit of time just talking about three of the cities that were represented on the task force, Houston, Fort Collins and Salt Lake City. I'm going to give a little bit about what each of these cities are doing and kind of what the recommendations perhaps are most important. So Houston is a large community about over 6 million, projected to grow to 7 million by 2020. Their main focus is on reducing greenhouse gas emissions as their population is going to increase. Their climate impacts again are the heat and drought, storms and floods. So what are they doing? They've replaced all their street lights with LEDs. They're focused on energy efficiency, improving the energy efficiency of buildings, growing their hybrid fleet, municipal fleet, purchasing renewable energy for municipal buildings, advancing electric vehicles and installing solar meters, solar parking meters. They also have an aggressive bike sharing plan, a bike sharing system and they've started a comprehensive bike plan, a study. And this is a $500 million public-private partnership where they're going to further build on their system of bike paths and trails which I have a slide on in a minute. This is not only for recreation but it's also about mobility. They're reducing greenhouse gases. Obviously the transportation is the key here. Oh, whoops, I forgot I had three on one slide. Fort Collins is really a story about fire and flood. There was a 2012 High Park Fire which burned about 80,000 acres and that was really a precursor to the 2003 flood. The fire changed their landscape around Fort Collins. It caused erosion since the fire. There's been increased erosion, debris flow, flash floods and it destroyed their natural infiltration system which they had to spend $2 million to rebuild, to build a structure that was destroyed from the fire. So again, the disaster preparedness and recovery recommendations from the task force are really important here. As was their peer-to-peer learning with the state of Vermont which really they credit the state and the city, both credit with helping to speed up the recovery process from the 2013 flood. But really it was the lessons learned from the 1997 flood which was a greater than 500 year event and incidentally the 2013 flood was only a 50 year event. Lessons learned from that really helped them minimize the damage and the impacts. And also the building on that, a recommendation in the task force report on the resilience core which would help smaller communities build capacity both before, during and after emergencies providing on the ground support and technical assistance. You may have seen in the news recently that Fort Collins this month adopted an aggressive climate action plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2030 which is a full 20 years ahead of the other communities that are by hoping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by that much by 2050. They don't exactly know how they're going to get there. I think there's a lot of technological advances that need to happen but it's more than just a partnership it's a community wide effort. And then finally Salt Lake City as Carol mentioned Mayor Becker is our president this year of National League of Cities and he's been really engaged both in his community very active in his community on these issues and for NLC. There haven't been any major climate disasters in Salt Lake City but nonetheless they are doing vulnerability assessments and strengthening their emergency planning and response. This will reduce the risk to their citizens and minimize costs for any future events. So again the pre-disaster training and response recovery are essential information from the federal government and data on flood hazard maps, wildfire risks, erosion hazards are all critical. And they've also highlighted as key recommendation the value in considering the true economic costs in future climate risks in their decision making process. So taking into account the long-term benefits not just the short-term costs. And this is true for them at the city level and also at the federal level and I think this was mentioned before but the federal grants and programs considering climate change is an important step. Okay and then I just wanted to talk about two other recommendations that I think are really going to be critical for local governments. The first one is PACE, allowing policies, reforming policies to allow Fannie and Freddie to accept more mortgages with PACE loans. I think this would be a game changer for cities, a game changer for energy efficiency, renewable energy. We know commercial PACE projects are thriving across the country. I think there's 13 states with active programs. Residential PACE is happening in California. The state was able to set up a loan loss reserve fund and a handful of other states. But this we know saves homeowners money, improves property values, simulates the economy and improves the housing market. There's also a pilot program in California with HUD to look at PACE projects for multifamily housing. And I think this would have, if that program is successful, that could have positive implications for PACE programs nationwide. And then the other recommendation I just want to highlight quickly is that of green infrastructure, supporting green infrastructure, incentivizing green infrastructure. And here we have Chicago, this is obviously a green roof, but they're doing a green alley program. They're looking at their tree canopy and not only increasing their tree canopy, but looking at which trees are able to be planted in Chicago. And it's no longer the cold weather trees, but it's more of the southern trees that are warmer weather. This has dual benefits, again, mitigating effects of increasing temperatures, stormwater management, increasing energy efficiency and lowering energy costs. And here's another green infrastructure project in Houston, a large scale project. The Houston Buyways, the BU Greenways Initiative, is, again, 220 million public-private partnership to add 1,500 acres of new green space and 150 miles of trails to add to their 450 miles of existing bike trails. This is also a quality of life project. They did a benefits study and found the total measurable annual benefits of about 117 million, and not including all of the benefits that you can't readily calculate. But again, Houston's focused on air and water quality and reducing flooding and stimulating the economy all through the green infrastructure project here. This is just another city, Eugene, Oregon, where there's a fire and flood push and pull. Again, hazard mitigation, planning, disaster preparedness, emergency response, and vulnerability assessments, all looking at the climate risk to the community. Okay, so cities can lead, cities will lead. You know, whether you're, this is kind of our theme as we're looking forward to the UN negotiations in Paris on the climate talk. Cities will be at the center of the stage in this negotiations. We sent a delegation to Stockholm six years ago, and it was really all about the national governments. But this year what we're seeing is that local governments are at the center stage. So what NLC is doing with partners is pulling together all of these local stories in hopes that demonstrating that there's a collective commitment to addressing climate change. I do have recommendations. The administration is taking positive steps to implement the recommendations of the task force. We expect and hope to see more in the next two years. But there are important roles for Congress as well. And I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about tax exempt status for municipal bonds. It's the main source of funding infrastructure projects. Without this, there will be, local governments will pay more to finance projects leading to less infrastructure investments, fewer jobs and greater burdens for those that have to pay higher taxes and fees. We need more financing tools, not less. And we have to be smarter with what we have, especially in terms of improving infrastructure and rebuilding our communities to be climate resilient. And second, I want to mention the Portman Shaheen bill, a broad comprehensive bill on energy efficiency. And we are particularly supportive of the provision there that would allow lenders and homeowners with more flexible underwriting standards to include the home's energy cost savings and mortgages. And then finally also, national policies that will really drive long-term investments in change and local success. And local governments are taking action. Cities are taking action every day. And this will save lives, strengthen local economies, save taxpayer dollars, and build preparedness for future events. Thank you. All right, so does anyone have any questions or comments for our presenters this afternoon? Okay, and please identify yourself, Terry. Thanks. Terry Hill with the Passive Hours Institute. Is there any discussion about deep energy retrofits in any of these discussions? Deep energy efficiency retrofits. Carolyn, do you know in terms of any particular city action on that print? Okay, I think it's on. Yes, I mean, I think cities are doing that. It's part of, you know, looking at their building stock, existing building stock, homes and commercial properties. A lot of cities are engaged in the energy retrofits. And I think a big push on that came from the Energy and Conservation Block Grant that Congress funded through the Stimulus Act. But yes, yes. And just from the state level as well, certainly Washington state and a number of other states have pretty, I think as you know, pretty comprehensive and pretty significant energy efficiency retrofit programs throughout states. I mean, one of the things we tried to highlight through the task force recommendations was building more efficient energy systems and taking less load off of centralized systems and power plants that are vulnerable to cold weather snaps, to extreme weather events, do function as a good pathway towards resilience in addition to building clean energy resources that can partly answer your question. From South Florida, I would just share that we really struggle with energy issues. We're very supportive and progressive, I think. We've adopted renewable energy goals as our communities. We've supported PACE. We have many cities and counties that are participating in PACE, despite the difficulties of the current FHFA position. But we see challenges in the Florida Supreme Court with respect to PACE in large part because of the federal position. In addition, we've had energy efficiency standards eliminated by our Public Services Commission for our large energy utilities. And we've also had rebates for solar initiatives eliminated at both through the state program and we're in the final year of those that are being offered at the utilities and feed-in tariffs have been eliminated in some areas also. So again, standards that can be in incentives that are advanced at the federal level that will broaden opportunities, create opportunities and some flexibility for local communities that are ready to lead would be very attractive or very hamstrung by state energy policy in our state. That's really interesting in terms of sort of looking at that combination of circumstances and then I had wanted to just also ask all of you. I think Carolyn, you raised it in terms of that there are a number of areas where cities, where local governments feel that they are hamstrung. Well, and you just mentioned it in terms of the county level too by states. And I was curious in terms of whether, in terms of, like Governor Inslee in terms of thinking about also some of his other colleagues on the task force and in terms of some of the mayors, county commissioners, whether there is now going to be an effort to kind of look at how maybe some of your associations might sort of look at this whole issue and take that on a little bit more in terms of some of these barriers that where state policy is blocking local governments from being able to move forward. What's the best way forward on that? And do you see like say Western Governors or NGA looking at that recommendation or is NLC or the Conference of Mayors or NACO going to sort of push in terms of say some of the gubernatorial associations? I was just curious. And the short answer is no, I don't think so. The longer answer is, and this is a really good point that I think both my colleagues have drawn out, which is here I've talked about the things the state of Washington has done is doing on climate resilience, which we think are progressive and are supportive of our local communities, our cities and our counties who are also doing really remarkable things, forward-looking things on every corner of the state. Blue, red, purple and otherwise. But there are a number of states who are very much not doing these things and as they've alluded to, it's important to note that of the governors from states and territories that serve in the task force, there were eight of them. It was bipartisan representation. There were seven Democratic governors and one Republican governor from the territory of Guam. And by and large the task force, which had also a number of Democratic and Republican mayors as well as the county officials and tribal officials, important to note that these efforts were bipartisan and unfortunately as we all know, a lot of the discussion around climate, both mitigation and unfortunately the resilience, which I can argue is just good government, unfortunately even the resilience has waded into the partisan discussion. So I know that there have been, for instance the NGA has been, and this is not to disparage the NGA whatsoever, that have been very involved in understanding what these recommendations were and we have helped to try and disseminate the information to our colleagues. At various states, first of all, face various different climate risks and second of all, there's various appetites to undertake climate resilience activities as we've seen in various states. Well, I would just say that perhaps one example is the EPA's Clean Power Plan. NLC did support that in terms of local governments helping local governments able to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. And obviously there are a number of states that are coming out opposed. So how this plays out, I don't know, but I think that states, cities are looking really to be a part of that with the energy efficiency programs that they are doing. So I think that's one area where we are seeing this conflict. But again, it is also from the federal level as well. Other questions, comments? Okay, back here. Union of Concerned Scientists, you've kind of talked about this, but I'd love to hear a little bit more about where does this initiative come from for investment in preparedness? Is this our business is calling for it? Is this local leaders taking leadership, community members? Who's pushing for this? Yeah, in South Florida, I would say that there's a strong diverse base. We have had the business community, for example, in the city of Miami Beach, it was the business community that really rallied to prompt the local leadership to be more aggressive on adaptation and resiliency issues. We have seen calls for bringing together the business community, the insurance community, the finance industry to look at adaptation strategies, finance strategies. But there's also strong support from the homeowners who are realizing those impacts. We had one community where as a result of what was now this very chronic high-tide flooding that they negotiated with the city to fund at a cost of about $300,000 retrofit of the stormwater system with some technologies and that if that played out then the city would reimburse them and then utilize that as a more comprehensive strategy. So residents are looking for engagement. We've had business owners that have had $50,000 in flood loss with high-tide, repeated, maybe it's in their business and in their residents. So I think collectively there's an appreciation that there needs to be these investments in infrastructure, that's the role of local government. And there's a stronger appreciation that the avoided losses of those impacts are going to be a wise investment short and long term. Jennifer, could you talk a little bit more about the role of the insurance industry and how they are responding or what kinds of actions they're taking? The insurance industry, largely the engagement has been through the reinsurance and obviously they've been undertaking very comprehensive risk assessments. We know that they've got extensive data sets and are well aware of what those risks are and climate impacts continue to escalate in terms of the potential losses. In terms of the local insurance market, Florida's insurance is quite different from others. We have very stringent windstorm requirements and we have state underridden policies. So I think that the major influences have to come with the flood insurance. Of course we saw the conversation that evolved with the Bigger Waters Act. We're seeing modified flood maps that are showing enhanced risks in these very vulnerable areas and individuals are starting to think about whether insurance will be affordable long term, will there be a market for that real estate long term and I expect that the combination of losses and insurance rate hikes will end up being one of the drivers in terms of what happens to some of the more vulnerable communities even out absent the longer term predictions. There will be some adjustments in the shorter term. I was also interested to ask whether you are seeing a lot of people from other counties within Florida that are coming to you to talk about the compact, whether you're getting a lot from other states as well within the state. There have been a lot of collaborations internally and with communities outside of our state. In the Jacksonville area there's a business community that's leading on climate resiliency and they've convened their own workgroup that's involving their chamber of commerce. So it looks like something akin to our compact could be evolving in the northeast, in the Tampa area. There seem to be conversations too about organizing regionally and we've participated in a lot of conversations with communities nationwide that are all many are also looking at regional collaborations but they have different structures based upon their own geography and governance structures. So I think that it's increasingly becoming evident that the challenges are too great to undertake individually and there's a great deal of virtue that comes in sharing information, sharing experts. We don't have to replicate the same technical team across all the counties. We can share staffing and there's an acceleration in process that comes. We have more robust work products. There's a greater tendency to be able to piggyback on the work products of others and it's really allowed and others I think have seen that there's an acceleration that comes in planning and being able to also garner community support when you bring forward ideas that are reflective of a very much larger geographic area and political commitment. Great, great. Any other questions or comments? Okay, go ahead, Terry. The insurance industry has come up with its own building codes. Audified, I think the name or the acronym is, is you seeing much of that deployed in Florida? The situation in Florida is again one in which we have very restrictive environment as it relates to building codes. In South Florida we were successful in negotiating a very special part of building code for high wind velocity zone that includes Palm Beach and Broward counties. But there are restrictions on advancing building code and any energy code standards that would be more strict than the state standard. The state's building code lags about three years behind the federal building codes. I know there's this international building code that has many attractive measures and I believe that all in all there's a movement to integrate a lot of that into the Florida code. But there's a lag and it's a requisite state process. Which is another issue that happens since a lot of these codes have to be approved at the state level. Okay, let me just ask are there any particular other points that any of you wanted to raise as you look at this and as the recommendations move forward? Okay, terrific. And so I want to thank you all for coming. Hopefully you will all look at the task force report. Think about what it could mean in terms of your local communities. If you're with a federal agency or in terms of thinking about state government. And I think there was a fact sheet outside that basically summarizes the recommendations of the report. And I also want to remind everyone that on April 20th we'll be holding a second briefing with regard to recommendations in the report. But that briefing will really focus on recommendations coming from tribal leaders and looking at impacts implications that they see. And with a special look at some of the situations that tribal leaders are dealing with in Louisiana and how they are planning to move forward. So I want to thank our panel very much for all of your hard work. And all of the information that you gave us, which was a lot. So and please feel free to take advantage of them because they're all wonderful resources. And join me in thanking them all.