Water Utility Resilience Program

This program supports local drinking water and wastewater utilities in strengthening their resilience and prepare for emergencies and the development of statewide mapping initiatives.

Overview

The Water Utility Resilience Program (WURP) supports local drinking water and wastewater utilities in their efforts to prepare for climate change. The Program is a collaborative effort across MassDEP to improve the availability of map products from water utilities. WURP provides community public drinking water systems (COM PWSs) and publicly-owned treatment works (POTWs) with technical assistance to develop or update geographic information system (GIS) datasets and critical infrastructure maps. As part of this effort, WURP also develops and maintains statewide service area maps to depict the geographic area served by publicly or privately owned drinking water or sanitary sewer utilities. The utility-level critical infrastructure maps and the statewide service area maps are designed to enhance critical infrastructure resilience planning, asset management planning, and climate change adaptation.

News and Updates

December 2024: Mapping opportunity/Request for information open to publicly owned/operated water utilities

As part of its work to prepare PWSs and POTWs for climate change and emergencies,  WURP released a Request for Information (RFI ) BD-25-1045-BPE00-BPE01-110888 to identify and collect information from publicly-owned/operated Public Water Systems (PWS) and publicly-owned treatment works (POTWs) interested and ready to receive GIS mapping services. This effort aims to ensure that all public water utilities have accurate maps of their respective systems to enhance asset management, improve system operations and resiliency, and plan for and respond to emergencies. If you are interested in applying for this opportunity, please refer to the  COMMBUYS posting for directions and application: BD-25-1045-BPE00-BPE01-110888. The RFI closed on February 14, 2025.

September 2024: Publication of the drinking water service area dataset to MassGIS

MassDEP is pleased to announce the publication of the drinking water service area dataset to MassGIS. Data delineating the areas served by public water systems (PWSs) is available for the first time through MassMapper and the MassGIS’s ArcGIS Online Data Hub. The full dataset including description, metadata, and upcoming options to download the data or use it in ArcGIS Online are available through the MassGIS’s dataset landing page. This mapping effort began in 2017, as part of the "Enhancing Resilience and Emergency Preparedness of Water Utilities through Improved Mapping.” Through this project, the MassDEP Water Utility Resilience Program (WURP) began to uniformly map drinking water service areas throughout Massachusetts using information collected from various sources. Along with confirming existing public water system (PWS) service area information, the MassDEP WURP Mapping Project collected and verified estimated service area delineations for PWSs not previously delineated. As of the date of publication, WURP has delineated Community (COM) and Non-Transient Non-Community (NTNC) service areas. Transient non-community (TNCs) are not part of this mapping project. All PWS service area delineations are approximate estimates for broad planning purposes and should only be used as a guide. These data are considered estimates because not all properties within a PWS service area are necessarily served by the system, and the PWS could serve some properties outside the mapped service areas – please contact the relevant PWS to confirm service. Please review the accompanying metadata for additional details about the dataset development, review, and maintenance process. Questions may be directed to WURP at [e-mail].

Critical Infrastructure GIS Mapping Initiative

“Enhancing Resilience and Emergency Preparedness of Water Utilities through Improved Mapping”

The Water Utility Resiliency Program focuses on the following      .

1. Technical assistance to water utilities: WURP provides free critical infrastructure mapping assistance to public drinking water and wastewater systems. WURP and their consultant work directly with the public drinking water or wastewater system to develop and update their infrastructure maps, which  improves asset management, enhances emergency response, and aids compliance to regulatory requirements. This objective also supports MassDEP with secure access to critical infrastructure mapping information, which strengthens emergency preparedness and resilience planning.
2. State GIS data: WURP develops and maintains statewide datasets made available through MassGIS.
3. Increase data accessibility through the development of data visualization tools and reports.

A full project history and critical infrastructure assistance provided to date is available below.

Enhancing Resilience and Emergency Preparedness of Water Utilities through Improved Mapping: 2016 - 2025

How can the program help my drinking water and/or wastewater utility?

 The Water Utility Resilience Program (WURP) can assist with identifying helpful and practical resiliency resources, finding opportunities for local and regional partnerships, offering infrastructure mapping and adaptation planning assistance, and coordinating training opportunities.

What specific support can the program provide?

WURP prioritizes technical assistance for publicly-owned drinking water and wastewater utilities based on system vulnerability and infrastructure risks identified through desktop assessments that determine topographic vulnerabilities, emergency response events, regional program recommendations, and utility interest. The most recent offer for technical assistance closed on February 14, 2025. Additional opportunities may be available in the future. WURP can connect water utilities with valuable climate change information and resources.

Climate Change Information & Resources

To best identify helpful climate change resources for the water utility sector, WURP actively participates in various agencies’ climate change programs as well regional calls concerning water security and water use. Below are some climate-related programs and resources that the water sector may find useful.

MA Executive Order 569 & the Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) Program

In September 2016, the Governor signed EO 569, “Establishing an Integrated Climate Change Strategy for the Commonwealth,” which, among several other actions, requires the state to publish a Climate Adaptation Plan. This plan is currently under development as a combined State Hazard Mitigation and Climate Adaptation Plan, with an anticipated completion date of September 2018. In addition, EO 569 requires the state to establish a framework for each City and Town in the Commonwealth to assess its vulnerability to climate change and extreme weather events, and to identify adaptation options for its assets. The MVP grant program is a direct result of this EO 569 requirement and provides support for cities and towns to begin the process of planning for climate change resiliency and implementing projects.

To see EO 569 in its entirety, please go to: No. 569: Establishing an Integrated Climate Change Strategy for the Commonwealth

For specific information on MVP, please go to: Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) program

To view all resiliency tools and datasets available for Massachusetts, please go to: Resilient Mass

Go to the State Hazard Mitigation and Climate Adaptation Plan released in 2023

Go to the Massachusetts Climate Change Assessment report released in 2022

 Go to the first Climate Change Adaptation Report for Massachusetts at 2011 Massachusetts Climate Change Adaptation Report - Full Report

National Climate Resources

Several federal agencies, including the United States Environmental Protection Agency, have developed a number of tools to assist with climate change adaptation that have been designed specifically for water utilities. A brief overview of some of these tools and their links includes:

US EPA Climate Ready Water Utilities (CRWU) Initiative Resource and Toolbox
Online resource specific to water utility managers that provides tools, training and technical assistance to adapt to climate change. The CRWU toolbox provides access to resources containing climate-related information that can be searched by geographic region, water utility type and size, water resources, climate change impact and climate change response strategies, including planning for climate change and assessing climate change risks and vulnerability.

US EPA Adaptation Strategies Guide for Water Utilities
Informational resource guide used to provide adaptation options for drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater utilities based on region and projected climate impacts. The guide assists utilities in gaining a better understanding of what climate related impacts they may face, and includes information on incorporating sustainability (green infrastructure and energy management) into adaptation planning.

US EPA Region 1 Resilience and Adaptation in New England (RAINE) Database
An online database collection of vulnerability, resilience and adaptation reports, plans and webpages at the state, regional and community level made easily accessible to additional communities dealing with similar climate change issues (specific to US EPA Region 1).

US EPA Storm Surge Inundation and Hurricane Strike Frequency Map
Interactive map shows current worst-case coastal storm surge or inundation scenarios and hurricane strike frequency derived from the Sea, Lake and Overland Surge from Hurricanes (SLOSH) models by NOAA, 100 and 500 year flood plains from FEMA and Hurricane strike dataset from the National Hurricane Center (NHC).

US EPA Route to Resilience (RtoR)
A downloadable users guide for drinking water and wastewater utilities to learn what it means to be resilient, and what tools and resources are available for their utility to become resilient.

US EPA Climate Resilience Evaluation and Awareness Tool (CREAT 3.0)
A Web-based risk assessment tool that allows drinking water and wastewater utilities to evaluate potential impacts of climate change and identify adaptation options. The tool guides users through identifying specific asset threats, and after assessment, provides a series of risk reduction and cost reports to evaluate adaptation options for planning.

During 2015 and 2016, WURP joined EPA in working with two Massachusetts communities on pilot projects involving the completion of a climate change risk assessment using CREAT. If you are interested in further assistance with CREAT and using lessons learned from the pilot projects, please contact WURP.

US EPA Water Infrastructure and Resiliency Finance Center
This online tool will explore innovative financial tools, public-private partnerships and build on SRF to better leverage federal funding programs with the goal of utility improvement through innovating financing and building resilience to climate change.

Water Research Foundation (WRF) Climate Change Clearinghouse
Online resource about drinking water, wastewater and water reuse.

Water Utility Climate Alliance (WUCA)
WUCA is a collaboration of 10 of the nation’s largest water providers including NY to provide leadership and collaboration on climate change issues affecting the country’s water agencies for decision making purposes. Also collaborating with CRWU and Piloting Utility Modeling Applications.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Portal
The climate portal is a single point of online entry for NOAA’s collection of climate data and information.

NOAA Coastal Flood Exposure Mapper
A free online tool that provides maps, data and information to assess risks and vulnerabilities related to coastal flooding and hazards.