Infrastructure feels the heat as climate change accelerates

When it comes to infrastructure, the storm in Greater Lansing two weeks ago was unprecedented.

That’s according to the Board of Water & Light’s general manager, Dick Peffley: “Thursday night’s EF-1 tornado was the worst damage to our transmission system that we’ve seen in our service territory.”

Before this month, the last time BWL transmission poles — the taller, high-voltage utility poles — had been damaged was 25 years ago, when two were broken in a tornado. The May 15 tornado broke 28. It also damaged 39 of the shorter, lower-voltage utility poles to boot. Over 24,000 BWL customers lost power.

But as climate change accelerates, such storms are becoming more frequent. And though the tornado sirens kept civilians safe, local infrastructure is feeling the heat

Jeffrey Andresen, Michigan’s state climatologist, said the number of extreme weather events is increasing.

“Precipitation events of 2, 3, 4 or more inches per day are clearly increasing,” he said. “And, unfortunately, those are the types of events with major impacts.”

Andresen said that, while tornadoes and other extreme weather events are a concern, his primary concern is increased stormwater, which he said has already caused major damage in Michigan.

“We’ve had several of these big events in Michigan in the last decade,” he said. “The Warren flooding disaster, the Father’s Day flood event, the Midland County dam failures — those are all associated with extreme participation events. And those are clearly increasing.”

Andresen said that in Michigan “we now have 10-15% more precipitation, both rainfall and frozen precipitation, than we did 75 years ago,” on average. That amounts to 3 to 4 inches of additional water, or nearly an extra month of precipitation per calendar year than 75 years ago.

Today, many cities understand that these trends will likely worsen. But much of current infrastructure was not built with increased stormwater capacity in mind, putting cities in a bind.

“The more capacity you build, the more expensive it’s going to be,” Andresen said. “And when you have to build new infrastructure or modify it, that’s a real problem because the benefits aren’t immediately apparent. It’s a long-term investment in communities.”

Patrick Lindemann, Ingham County’s drain commissioner, said current standards are quickly becoming obsolete.

“We hardly have any snow in the winter, so we have a lot of rain instead. And when it comes down, it does so in such a volume,” he said. “All our standards — the pipe sizes we used to use, the numbers we used to use — they’re all becoming obsolete. And we have to be prepared for that.”

He said his office will release “brand-new standards” by December “to accommodate the future water load.”

Lindemann said higher winds also heavily impact stormwater. When winds knock down trees and branches, they block and damage drain systems, and single tornadoes can rack up damage in the millions. He said the recent tornado had caused “massive tree loss” in the Groesbeck neighborhood, where there are 12 drains.

The stormwater also impacts other infrastructure, Lindemann said, including highways.

“They have to figure out where to put the rain when it hits the highways, and they can’t just close the highways,” he said. “When they build new highways, they’ll have to accommodate a future of wetness.”

In East Lansing, the Public Works & Environmental Services Department is approaching this problem by using computer models to predict future weather as part of the city’s three-year “wet weather resiliency plan.”

The plan involves building a climate model for East Lansing specifically, based on both historical data and future predictions.

“We need to know the specifics of East Lansing, how storms move across the region and how they’re impacted by topography changes,” Cliff Walls, the city’s environmental sustainability and resiliency manager, said. “Some of those more statewide or regional climate predictions are very useful, but we wanted to know what to expect here.”

A historical review identified localized increases amid the regional trends — for instance, a 75% increase in high-intensity cloudburst events of around one hour since 1959. These short-lived bursts of torrential rain can quickly overwhelm drainage systems.

“It’s a huge increase,” Walls said, “and it’s only going to continue.”

The model has two versions for two different scenarios: one in which emission reduction targets are hit by 2050, and another where current trends continue. In the less optimistic scenario, Walls said the model predicts a roughly 20% increase in stormwater volume by the year 2100 — on top of the roughly 30% increase already seen since 1959.

Those numbers are notable because pipe networks have a life cycle of around 75 years. Walls said the program, when complete, would be used to create new specifications for pipe size, to scout potential stormwater facilities and to inform private development standards.

East Lansing’s solution addresses the problem of an uncertain future. With a hydraulic model of the city through 2100, engineers can project how different severe storms might impact current infrastructure decades in advance. But building such a tool is not cheap.

“This is something that had long been desired,” Wells said, especially after two late-summer storms in 2021 caused flooding. But funding was hard to come by, since stormwater management is not supported by usage fees like wastewater or drinking water. The project is possible because of a $600,000 grant from the Environment, Great Lakes and Energy Department.

Peffley and David Price, the BWL’s Commission chair, did not provide specific information about how the BWL is preparing for increasingly severe weather, though they both acknowledged it as a concern. Price said operational resiliency was one of five strategic priorities recently adopted, but that management would “operationalize those priorities.” 

But time is running short to build and bolster infrastructure. With severe storms becoming increasingly commonplace, the next flash flood, hailstorm or tornado could be just around the corner.

“Climate change is here,” Walls said. “It’s not a future problem, and we need to deal with the impacts in the community.”