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Drinking Water Under Fire: Water Utilities’ Vulnerability to Wildfires in the Pacific Northwest


An older version of this resource http://www.hydroshare.org/resource/75d565f76a9c4f04990b1538201010d1 is available.
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Created: Nov 22, 2023 at 11:11 a.m.
Last updated: Nov 27, 2023 at 2:13 p.m.
DOI: 10.4211/hs.c874f49441144c1791d717c528092c8e
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Sharing Status: Published
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Abstract

Increased wildfire activity in the western US can lead to detrimental cascading effects to water quality. After fires, burned areas may experience significant runoff-induced erosion and sediment transport into rivers and reservoirs, which could rapidly overwhelm existing drinking water treatment plants. This paper couples an assessment of wildfire risk with an evaluation of water utility preparedness to understand where key fire-related drinking water vulnerabilities exist. Wildfire risk assessments were constructed and expanded from a commonly used methodology co-developed between researchers and water managers (Edel et al., 2002), to understand drinking water impacts on water quality after wildfires. A water utility preparedness index was created for this study using publicly available information to contextualize how well utilities may be able to respond to water quality degradation after fires.
Results indicate that 11% of utilities studied (10% of the population served) were underprepared for fire and 22% of watersheds used were at greater risk of wildfire (9% of the population served). However, over three-quarters of utilities (76% of the population served) showed a moderate risk of fire and some need for improved fire preparedness. information developed here could provide a useful framework from which utility managers can better assess their likely wildfire risk and preparation plans.

Subject Keywords

Coverage

Spatial

Coordinate System/Geographic Projection:
WGS 84 EPSG:4326
Coordinate Units:
Decimal degrees
Place/Area Name:
Pacific Northwest of US: Idaho, Washington and Oregon
North Latitude
49.3707°
East Longitude
-110.7861°
South Latitude
41.7580°
West Longitude
-125.5078°

Content

Related Resources

This resource updates and replaces a previous version Robichaud, P. (2023). Drinking Water Under Fire: Water Utilities’ Vulnerability to Wildfires in the Pacific Northwest, HydroShare, http://www.hydroshare.org/resource/75d565f76a9c4f04990b1538201010d1

Credits

Funding Agencies

This resource was created using funding from the following sources:
Agency Name Award Title Award Number
NASA NASA Water Resources Program 80NSSC19K1197

Contributors

People or Organizations that contributed technically, materially, financially, or provided general support for the creation of the resource's content but are not considered authors.

Name Organization Address Phone Author Identifiers
Julie Padowski Washington State University WA, US 5093358539

How to Cite

Robichaud, P. (2023). Drinking Water Under Fire: Water Utilities’ Vulnerability to Wildfires in the Pacific Northwest, HydroShare, https://doi.org/10.4211/hs.c874f49441144c1791d717c528092c8e

This resource is shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
CC-BY-NC-SA

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