volume 1 - Halifax Regional Municipality

Halifax Water Integrated Resource Plan
Appendices
making processes. Climate SMART was formally launched in March, 2004 and includes
several key deliverables:
1. Vulnerability assessments and sustainability analyses.
2. Cost-benefit assessments.
3. Emissions management and mitigation tool.
4. Climate change risk management plan.
5. An emissions management and adaptation methodology, which includes
methodologies for each sector of the community
6. Communications and outreach
While Climate SMART is a good starting point for mitigating and adapting to the effects
of a changing climate, Halifax Water will need to do more to assess impacts on its
infrastructure, identify the associated risks and develop risk management strategies.
Specific risks, which will directly affect the Halifax Water stormwater, wastewater and
drinking water systems include:
• Changing storm intensities may lead to overloading of the combined and storm
sewers under Halifax Water’s jurisdiction producing additional overflow volume and
potentially resulting in sewage back-ups.
• As temperatures warm, the oceans will expand and ice caps and glaciers will melt,
releasing much more freshwater into the oceans, causing sea levels to rise. Canadian
research suggests that sea levels in Halifax Harbour could rise by 73cm or more by
2100. This will impact the ability of the WWTFs and overflows to discharge into the
Harbour and may require either pumping or storage under peak tidal conditions.
Increased storm surge would exacerbate this effect.
• Higher temperatures would lead to greater evaporation of our lakes and rivers. This
could result in lower flows of water and in turn, lead to poor raw drinking water
quality due to increased concentrations of pollutants and algal blooms.
Halifax Water presently has a project examining the impacts of climate change on
drainage design and operation. The climate change assessment proposed here would
build on those results producing the following:
• Summary of climate change science indicating the likely long-term trends for Halifax
region future climate with respect to:
- Temperature rise
- Sea level rise
- Storm surge
- Future precipitation characteristics including rainfall volume, intensity and
frequency as well as snowfall amount
Revision: 2012-10-29 Integrated Resource Plan –Appendices F-2
October 31 2012 Page 181 of 272