Mainstreaming Adaptation to Extreme Precipitation at a West Coast Water Utility by Engaging Precipitation First-Responders

Here we share the results of co-producing adaptation research with Seattle Public Utilities (SPU), a municipal water utility serving over 1.5 million customers by supplying drinking water and managing the city's sewer and drainage systems. Situated in the Western U.S., SPU is coping with changes in wintertime precipitation extremes and impacts on water, infrastructure, and system-wide operations. Water utility crew staff, including those who perform system maintenance and operations in the field, are experiencing these climate impacts firsthand, and are the 'precipitation first responders' at water utilities. Crew have experiential knowledge about precipitation risk that is often not integrated in utilities' strategic planning and adaptation cycle implementation. Further, precipitation directly affects their working conditions as frontline staff. Centering crew perspectives is thus imperative for advancing climate justice and avoiding maladaptation.

We used surveys and interviews to identify avenues for activating the adaptation cycle across SPU. We asked: 1) Are crew perceiving changes to extreme precipitation, 2) if so, how are they communicating about it, 3) what adaptation planning actions are they currently equipped to take? Survey results from 112 crew staff across Utility functions show that crews perceive changes to extreme precipitation and are experiencing precipitation-related impacts on their working conditions and job efficacy. Interviews provided insights into crews' current adaptive capacity and gaps that can be filled. Next, we will co-produce targeted interventions to activate a worker-centric adaptation strategy.

Insights may inform other water utilities and organizations that are motivated to mainstream climate adaptation across their internal silos and organizational hierarchies, bridging emergency weather response, long-term planning, and climate-labor justice efforts.