2023Completion Year
$25,400Project Cost
$25,400MCCAC Funding
Overview
The Town of Taber received $25,400 for the completion of a Preliminary Climate Analysis. The project was completed in the Climate Resilience Capacity Building Program, funded by the Government of Alberta.
MPE Engineering Ltd. worked with the Town to assess the municipal water system following the federal Climate Lens requirement and the Public Infrastructure Engineering Vulnerability Committee’s High Level Screening Guide (PIEVC HLSG) methodology.
The scope of work included the initial steps of a climate change resilience assessment process, first determining the exposure of water-related infrastructure to climate hazards and then estimating the future likelihood of those hazards, resulting in a preliminary climate analysis of the Town of Taber’s water system.
Approach
Located in Southern Alberta in the Oldman and South Saskatchewan River catchment areas, the Town of Taber is a family-oriented and welcoming community known as a hub of agriculture and industry. The region is prone to both flooding and drought, experiencing regional flooding events in 2010, 2011, and 2013.
Assessing the impact on municipal water systems is complex, as the causes of extreme events like flooding extend beyond municipal boundaries and to regional and watershed scale.
As the Town prepares to develop Water and Wastewater Master Plans and provide recommendations for future infrastructure upgrades, this climate analysis was completed to equip the Town with an understanding of how the municipal water system interacts with a changing climate.
The study assessed three sub-systems of the municipal water system:
- The potable water system
- The stormwater system
- The sanitary water collection system
Results
The result of this project was a final report which includes analysis of the water and wastewater systems and an overview of climate-infrastructure interactions. Climate-infrastructure interactions are the relationships between climate hazards and a component of the municipal water system, such as the water treatment plant, water quality, and personnel.
Twenty-four distinct climate hazards were assessed for the Town of Taber. The analysis identified 74 climate-infrastructure interactions. Many of the climate-infrastructure interactions were related to the impacts of flood, drought, and high temperature. These climate hazards are expected to moderately or strongly increase in occurrence and/or intensity when compared to the recent past climate.
Benefits
This plan supports future decision making around infrastructure planning and development through the lens of climate impacts. Undertaking a preliminary climate analysis provided the Town of Taber with an understanding of the most relevant climate impacts to the water and wastewater infrastructure before commencing Waste and Wastewater System Master Plans.
Throughout this project, the Town was confronted by the magnitude of this work, coming to the realization of how much of the water-related infrastructure would be affected, and the scale of necessary upgrades. In successfully completing a preliminary climate analysis, the Town of Taber has established a starting point from which to conduct a future risk & vulnerability assessment and outline adaptation actions to manage risks to their municipal water system.
Our community is in early stages of understanding our resiliency and adapting to climate change. The Town gratefully acknowledges the MCCAC for their funding and support through the CRCB Program to allow us to begin this journey and to allow us to forge a path for climate mitigation efforts.
Gary Scherer, Director of Engineering and Public Works
