We are excited to announce that the Georgetown University Climate Center in Washington, D.C. has reached out to SRWA to discuss conducting a case study on community and regional response to climate change-driven extreme weather events.
The Georgetown Climate Center (GCC) was founded in 2009 by the Georgetown University law school to address needs of state leaders seeking to strengthen connections between climate policies and policymakers at all levels of government, and to help policymakers develop aligned strategies to address climate change related issues. GCC focuses on two broad categories of action:
- Mitigation: Reducing the carbon pollution that causes climate change from power generation, transportation, and other sources; and
- Adaptation: Adapting to and becoming more resilient to the effects of climate change, including rising sea levels and flooding, extreme heat, and severe weather events.
GCC discovered SRWA’s website and recognized that the efforts of our organization and others in the region fit their current study program of local government and community response to extreme weather events like flooding. Our 10-year revision of the Marengo River Watershed Management Plan (now in final stages of completion) will be further studied and compared with similar community responses across the country. The Center’s case study team interviewed Kevin on December 12th to further explore the role of SRWA’s work on flooding and climate change response aspects of the plan revision, and our collaboration with concurrent Natural Flood Management studies undertaken by Ashland County, Wisconsin Wetlands Association, and several other agencies. We discussed historic and recent flooding, how it is driven by regional hydrological, geological, and ecological factors, and the role socioeconomics play in the impact of flood events on communities.
The GCC team will be getting back in touch with us soon after developing a method plan for the case study and defining our role in it. This project should provide national exposure to the efforts of SRWA and the many other dedicated regional partners working to respond to emerging climate change challenges in the Lake Superior basin. With the increased emphasis on funding infrastructure resiliency to climate change impacts (the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill and other programs), the potential of better national visibility of projects planned or underway in our region is great news!
