Insurer Climate Risk Disclosure Survey: 2012 Findings and Recommendations

2012 was the warmest year on record in the Lower 48 states and the second most extreme weather year in U.S. history. This is not a coincidence. Extreme weather -- stronger, more damaging storms, unprecedented drought and heat in some regions and unprecedented rainfall and flooding in others -- are the predictable consequences of rising global temperatures.Eleven extreme weather events each caused at least a billion dollars in losses last year in the United States. A single event, Hurricane Sandy, caused more than $50 billion in economic losses. Insurance companies are on the hook for tens of billions of dollars in claims as a result of Sandy and other severe weather events. And American taxpayers are on the hook for tens of billions of dollars themselves, thanks to losses sustained by the National Flood Insurance Program as well as disaster relief spendingThis raises a fundamental question: Is the insurance industry prepared? Have insurers analyzed and measured their climate-related risk? Are they planning for life in a warmer world? These should be essential questions for insurance regulators in all 50 states to be asking, and some are

Investment Risks for Water Projects

Unlike most of the developed world, where investor-owned water systems serve the majority of the population, the United States relies mostly on water provided by public systems. To a great extent, these systems were financed through the taxation authority of the federal government—the iconic Hoover Dam only one of the many hundreds of pipelines and reservoirs built by agencies such as the Bureau of Reclamation and Army Corps of Engineers for the benefit of local economic development. Similarly, many of the drinking and waste- water treatment facilities in operation today were built to help com- munities comply with the federal Safe Drinking Water Act and Clean Water Act and financed in large part by federal dollars distributed through the Environmental Protection Agency, sometimes leveraged by state revolving loan funds. What of our public water systems has not been paid for by federal or state tax dollars has been debt-fi- nanced through the tax-exempt municipal bond market. Of the $3.7 trillion municipal bond market,1 roughly 10% is debt issued by water and wastewater systems to build, repair and expand water infrastructure

Mapping the void : brownfield inventories by local governments

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (p. 91-93).Brownfields are abandoned or underused land whose redevelopment is complicated by the presence or perception of contamination. Nationally the United States Environmental Protection Agency estimates the number of brownfields to be more than half a million. As of 2002, the EPA requires states and tribal governments to inventory brownfields within their boundaries in order to receive federal funding for brownfield response programs; municipalities and regional planning offices eligible for competitive EPA brownfield grants are encouraged to first conduct a brownfield inventory. Assessment grants funding inventories are open-ended, allowing local governments to define their own methods of identifying brownfields and prioritizing parcels for redevelopment; as such there is little documentation of the way inventories are conducted. Through interviews with brownfield redevelopment professionals and inventory makers in Alabama, California, Kentucky, Massachusetts and New Jersey this thesis explores the ways local governments prioritize property types for identification, how they locate brownfields, how they incorporate community knowledge, and how inventories influence subsequent public funding allocations.(cont.) This research indicates that inventories tend to focus on large sites close to infrastructure with the intention of marketing individual properties rather than strategically incorporating brownfield redevelopment into broader urban or regional planning. While local governments frequently design inventories in partnership with and for use by non-government actors, they tend to work almost exclusively with other professional groups and have marginal success at soliciting community participation. Though inventories are meant to capture brownfields that have eluded regulatory databases of contaminant release reports, fear of litigation from injured property owners and reliance on official property records bias inventory results to represent only the most visible brownfields. I conclude that the EPA should work with planning professionals to educate inventory makers on ways of creating strategic inventories. I also assert that brownfield inventories must include community partnerships in order to align brownfield redevelopment with community objectives and explore the legal and political implications of such partnerships.by Sharlene Leurig.M.C.P