One Water Leadership Summit 2013 - Module 4

Dr. Kathy Freas, Senior Vice President and Global Water Service Team Leader, CH2M Hill

This talk will focus on systems-scalable approaches for addressing climate change with several examples from facility level to basin level to manage water, wastewater, and stormwater more sustainably.

SPOTLIGHT: New Orleans

In the City of New Orleans, ongoing partnerships among local government, citizens, and civic and business leaders are creating a pathway for implementing nearly $5 billion in infrastructure investments, policy reforms, and regional collaborations to create a more resilient, cost-effective, and integrated water management system. Beginning in 2011, the SWBNO partnered with the New Orleans Citizen Sewer, Water & Drainage Management Task Force, a diverse group of over thirty organizations and individuals with technical, financial, and legal expertise in municipal water systems, to identify existing funding, policies, and public assets that could be leveraged to improve the City’s aging and storm-damaged water systems, in part, by safely retaining storm water within public and private spaces throughout the City. Complementing this effort, the Greater New Orleans Foundation organized a five-part “Urban Water Series” to educate local officials and citizens on successful storm water management practices in other U.S. communities with “peer-to-peer” dialogues between New Orleans and these other communities. The regional economic development alliance, Greater New Orleans, Inc., recently completed a $2.5 million state-funded “Greater New Orleans Water Plan” that includes regional and localized strategies to address flooding caused by excess runoff and soil subsidence in the three parishes (counties) in the Greater New Orleans metropolitan area.