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For 130 years, Portland water customers have enjoyed high-quality drinking water at their taps. We are prepared to adapt and plan for a warming climate to continue to provide water that's safe and abundant for years to come.
Providing water in a changing climate
Climate change is here and now. Here in the Pacific Northwest, we can expect to see warmer temperatures, drier summers, and more frequent extreme weather events like heat waves and wildfires. These changing conditions require us to adapt so we can continue to serve excellent water every minute of every day for generations to come.
Investing in and maintaining a modern, resilient water system is our best tool for an uncertain future. This means we plan for climate change and its impacts in all our work, by:
- Ensuring enough future water supplies.
- Managing water quality.
- Protecting our outdoor workers during extreme heat.
- Using a responsive, flexible planning process that adapts to changing conditions and new data.
Climate impacts and system resilience
We are dedicated to understanding and preparing for a range of climate impacts to the City of Portland's drinking water system. While Portland's water system has some fundamental climate resilience already built in, emerging risks and disruptions from climate change will present new challenges.
Climate models project a warmer Northwest with hotter, drier summers, and warmer, wetter winters with heavier rainfall and less snowfall. As the long-term climate shifts, we anticipate a range of extreme conditions will impact the region in the future, even as individual weather years continue to be seasonally variable.
A rain-fed water supply
Portland's water supply reservoirs in the Bull Run Watershed depend mostly on seasonal rainfall, with smaller amounts of snowfall contributing to the overall water supply. The temperate rainforest of the Bull Run Watershed gets as much as four times the precipitation of Portland!
Despite the reliable rainfall, the watershed is experiencing impacts of a warmer climate. The dry season is starting earlier and more abruptly, causing longer streamflow declines and lower late summer reservoir inflows. While fall rains have remained closer to average, we will continue monitoring these hydrologic trends and their implications for water supply.
Water system climate resilience
We have been working to understand and prepare for the impacts of climate change to the water system for over two decades, and we are planning adaptively for the future. Each year, we develop a Seasonal Water Supply Augmentation and Contingency Plan, which helps guide the management of the drinking water system and prepares us to meet a range of supply and demand conditions.
Portland's groundwater supply, the Columbia South Shore Well Field, is a high-quality, reliable water source. It is a critical factor in the long-term climate resilience of the water system. The groundwater system is frequently used to supplement summer demand and if necessary, it can be used to provide an emergency water supply.
Portland has experienced decreasing water demand in the last two decades despite increasing population. This can be attributed to changes in land use, customers being more water-wise, and water-efficient appliances. Furthermore, long-range demand forecasts project a significant decline in total water system demand due to shifts in Portland's wholesale drinking water customers, further reducing supply pressure. Due to declining water demands, changes in wholesale customers, the availability of two high-quality supply sources, and adaptive planning, our water system is expected to meet customer water needs into the future.
Research and partnerships
The Water Bureau actively works with research institutions and climate scientists to assess how climate change could affect the drinking water system, and to develop tools to inform future water supply planning. We are currently part of the Water Utility Climate Alliance (WUCA), a group of fourteen water utilities that collectively serve drinking water to over 50 million Americans. WUCA's mission is to collaboratively enhance climate research and improve water-management decision making to ensure water utilities can respond to climate change and protect their water supplies.
Learn more about water utility climate adaptation and example case studies from WUCA.
City of Portland climate work
In addition to partnering with national climate leaders and scientists, we collaborate with City of Portland bureaus and other local public agencies to reduce carbon emissions and develop climate-resilient strategies for the region. We are committed to reducing our carbon footprint to meet the City's carbon emissions and equity goals. Tracking and reporting operational carbon emissions, energy use, and renewable energy generation allows us to set more aggressive organizational goals to respond to the climate emergency.