After a fire, water suppliers face a critical decision on whether to divert low-quality water or let it bypass their intakes, risking their financial bottom line by not delivering anticipated water quantities to their municipal and agricultural customers. WWA Director Ben Livneh is working with student Carli Brucker to quantify post-fire hydrologic and water quality risks in the form of spatial “layers” of expected responses from varying wildfire severities, rainfall intensities, and catchment properties. They seek to provide guidance on how different watersheds may respond to fire and identify which watersheds are more likely to thrive in the future, versus which watersheds are likely to produce lower-quality post-fire water that will challenge operations. They published a paper describing the state of the science on experimental simulators of post-wildfire water quality. They also submitted a manuscript that describes the outcomes from their own laboratory scale experiments in which they subjected soil samples to burning, rainfall, and different terrain slopes and collected and analyzed water quality samples. Lastly, they are preparing a manuscript that analyzes water quality from hundreds of basins across the western US, comparing pre- and post-fire water quality as well as burned and unburned locations. This work was highlighted in a presentation delivered by Brucker as part of the WWA webinar series in October 2022. 

In Phase 2 of this project (2024-2026), we will engage with Denver Water, Northern Water, and small, underserved utilities with water systems that are vulnerable to wildfire. Engagement will include improving understanding of both resilience status and adaptive capacity. This understanding will help us to co-develop key questions, tools, or products that utilities can use to increase water system resilience. We will explore existing toolkits and wildfire-water system activities in other regions, and produced by state and federal agencies like the US Forest Service, to inform activities in Phase 2, and to promote cross-region learning and build on existing knowledge.