ARLA views resilience at the parcel level as crucial to driving climate resilience. A key strategy to build local resilience is expanding and enhancing the effectiveness and fairness of incentive programs that encourage the development of distributed green infrastructure projects across residential, commercial, and institutional properties.
Advancing Resilience Through Distributed Stormwater Capture & Conservation: A Roadmap for Metropolitan Water District
This report presents a comprehensive roadmap for MWD and its partners to refine their incentive strategy to one that is more equitable and also designed to meet the current and future climate impacts facing the Southern California region. Created by an ARLA-led team, in collaboration with MWD staff, each step in the Roadmap is based off of extensive watershed modeling in three study areas: Las Virgenes, Lower San Gabriel River, and Long Beach. The granularity of the modeling allowed the team to quantify and monetize multiple water supply, water quality, and ecosystem benefits. Combined with financial and legal analysis, and outreach with key agencies this Roadmap recommends strategies to optimize water conservation and distributed stormwater capture efforts while bolstering community investment benefits. The Roadmap pays particular attention to ensuring an equitable framework for incentives and promoting climate-resilient landscapes. Key elements include addressing a portion of MWD’s water supply gap identified in the Integrated Resource Plan Regional Needs Assessment and draft Long Range Finance Plan, pursuing a cooperative funding model with regional partners based on beneficiaries as co-funders, and leveraging MWD financing authority to enhance investments in conservation and stormwater capture.
