SPR-696: Preliminary Study of Climate Adaptation for the Statewide ...

With wildfires projected to be increasing in frequency in the future, there would be manyimpacts to the economy, including a hit to elk hunting, a key tourist attraction in someparts of the state.Habitats will be harmed with changing wildlife crossing and connectivity impacts.Existing Guidelines and SpecificationsADOT adheres to the Roadway Design Guidelines (ADOT 2012, last updated May 2012), whichprovide standard specifications for infrastructure design, including roadway design, roadwaydrainage, and earthwork. Some guidelines are formulaic, but all require professional judgment inapplication. Focus group participant comments include the following: There are standard construction specifications that deal with design for infrastructure.Then there are “special terms” that might not be a part of standards, but would benegotiated with every project. ADOT published the document ‘Standard Specificationsfor Road and Bridge Construction. For environmental review, weather-related impacts may be discussed on a case-by-casebasis in situations that might require nonstandard mitigation measures. Regarding electrical infrastructure, different components have a certain rating. There isan assumption about temperature ranges that is made in engineering design. ADOT has a stormwater management best management practices guide forenvironmental compliance. In the current design standards, there are factors built in (e.g., exceedance thresholds forstormwater, thickness of pavement, height of bridge columns, etc.). These designstandards take into account a buffer such that it would be difficult for current weatherevents to exceed a certain threshold that impacts design. However, if climate changeforces us to evaluate the range of impacts and the possibilities that far exceed our currentunderstanding of weather events, this would be a new area for ADOT. ADOT staff wouldhave to wait to see the type of figures and assumptions built into the climate projectionsto see if they can believe in changing these thresholds.Examples of Successful Interagency EffortsDeveloping a climate adaptation plan requires ADOT to participate with different levels anddepartments of government. Thus, we wanted to inquire about ADOT’s previous examples ofsuccessful interagency efforts, both in idea and implementation. These could serve as modelsmoving forward.Best Management Practices (BMP) in Storm Water Management. This effort was theresult of a consent agreement in the early 2000s. Through a process that involved the U.S.Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), ADOT developed an environmental managementhierarchy for BMPs with a central coordination committee and district coordinators. The airquality and “low-volume waste” initiatives emerged from this, as well as the policy on municipalsewers.Building a Quality Arizona. This long-range, cross-disciplinary plan involved COGs andmetropolitan planning organizations (MPO) from around the State, along with ADOT, the42