This story is part of our series One Storm Away: How climate change is threatening drinking water on the Ocean State’s islands
As Rhode Island’s climate continues to change, scientists expect big changes to the state’s drinking water supply.
Climate models suggest that average air temperatures will increase over the next century, and predict more extreme weather.
“These weather changes will result in a variety of conditions that could negatively impact water utilities in the state,” according to SafeWater RI, a 2013 analysis by the Rhode Island Department of Health.
Water challenges are already a particular problem for the thousands of Rhode Islanders living on islands in and around Narragansett Bay. The water systems on Aquidneck, Conanicut, Prudence and Block Islands can’t rely on the Scituate Reservoir, which serves roughly 60% of the state. In Jamestown, some wells have gone dry. Prudence is searching for more potable water. Aquidneck’s water supply is vulnerable to the winter storms that batter the coast. And across the coast, the sea is continuing to rise, heightening the risk of saltwater intrusion in some areas. What the islands are facing could give the rest of the state clues about what’s coming.
As part of our ongoing series One Storm Away: How climate change is threatening drinking water on the Ocean State’s islands, The Public’s Radio’s Jeremy Bernfeld spoke with Baylor Fox-Kemper, a professor in the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences at Brown University who studies the ways climate change impacts the ocean.
Interview Highlights
This interview has been edited for length and clarity
On the impact of sea-level rise on Rhode Island
Since about 1900, we’ve seen about 20 centimeters of sea-level rise — that’s about 8 inches or so, the span of your hand. We expect to see by the end of this century, 50 centimeters to a meter, roughly. That’s quite a bit more than we’ve seen so far.
It depends a little bit on how much we emit between now and then. But really, the changes in sea level are slow to respond to emissions, so that we’re really catching up with the warming we’ve already done, in large part. Even if we were to stop emissions today, we would still see sea level rise for quite some time, for hundreds of years.
On how Rhode Island’s coastal and island communities can expect their water supplies to change
Wells and aquifers are limited by groundwater supply, of course, and it takes a long time to recharge them after you’ve drawn them out. And also, when sea levels rise, if you’re in a coastal community, you may actually get salt intrusion, which makes the water not drinkable or not usable for agricultural purposes.
In addition, if you do have a reservoir, you might need to plan for longer intervals between (rainfalls.) If you get those drought-like conditions, you might need to draw from the reservoir longer in between recharges. And then the recharges may come more suddenly, and so you need to be able to capture a greater quantity of water when it’s coming in — a lot of systems now are designed that when you have excessive rainfall, then they just let everything go because they can’t handle the inflow.
On how Rhode Island communities should be working to adapt in the era of climate change
When we think about climate resilience, it’s not only the change in the environment that’s our concern. It’s whether we’re in the line of fire of the changes that are coming. Are we exposed to those hazards, and (are we) vulnerable to them when they hit?
We don’t really have a lot of control over our exposure and the changes to the environment, aside from reducing fossil fuel burning, which we definitely should do. But we have a lot of control over whether we’re vulnerable to those events (like more extreme storms and drought.) So, improving water systems is one of the key ways (to adapt) — that’s something we have control over. It’s something that could really make us more resilient for the future.
