A partnership between NOAA’s National Ocean Service/Office for Coastal Management (NOS/OCM), the Climate Program Office (CPO), and the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service/National Centers for Environmental Information (NESDIS/NCEI) has been working together to sponsor, plan, and lead a series of workshops in seven regions across the country in Fiscal Year 2020. The meetings are meant to understand the information needs of small- to medium-size water utilities, improve existing tools, and build additional resources to meet water sector needs at different scales. Support for this endeavor is coming from NOS funds under the NOAA Water Initiative/Service Delivery and Decision Support team.
One workshop was held in the Mid-Atlantic region in March, but the remaining meetings had to be replanned because of COVID. The first of these revamped virtual workshops was held on July 13 in the Gulf region and led by the Southern Climate Impacts Planning Program (SCIPP), a CPO Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA) team, located at Louisiana State University. A special session focused on equity. The U.S. Water Alliance provided in-kind time to present this topic, which included local representation. The Northeast workshop, run by the Northeast Regional Climate Center (NRCC), will occur in 4 sessions — each session is a 2-hour webinar to be held on July 14, 16, 28 and 30. The third workshop wil be held on July 27th in the Great Lakes Region – hosted by the Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessment, a CPO RISA team.
