Summary of Contents
- Understanding the stormwater investment challenge and opportunity
- What do we mean by a resilience marketplace?
- Better define the environmental and economic benefits of more resilient infrastructure
- Develop technical understanding and capacity around new financing tools
- Scale innovation and realize market potential
Climate change is getting harder to ignore, from alarming new reports about its impacts to debates around a Green New Deal. Yet for all this attention, individual places—from the biggest cities to the smallest towns—are still struggling to do something about it.
An unpredictable climate should serve as a strong motivator for every community to better maintain its manmade and natural stormwater infrastructure to be more flexible and responsive. Increased flood risks are among the clearest challenges, with climate change already having generated billions of dollars in flooding costs. But as we saw in Houston during Hurricane Harvey—and in several other places along the Gulf Coast, Mississippi River, and beyond over the past few years—many communities currently have failing systems of water pipes, plants, and natural wetlands. Even more troubling is how communities cannot even handle runoff from daily rainfall, as well as additional pollution.
Communities need a new approach to accelerate investment in infrastructure that is resilient to growing climate pressures. They should carry out proactive repairs of their aging, inefficient stormwater systems as a way to deliver fiscal savings and long-term environmental and economic benefits. They also should invest in new technologies and green infrastructure to better protect properties and improve livability.
The Brookings Institute
by Joseph Kane & Adie Tomer
March 18, 2019