Aug. 24—Regina Wheeler started as Santa Fe’s Public Works and Utilities Department director in July 2018, just five days before a massive flood threw the city into emergency mode.
“Houses were washed away, roads were washed away by a rainstorm that sat there and dropped a thousand-year-flood,” Wheeler recalled.
Along with devastation caused by flooding, the storm also knocked out the city’s power for about eight hours, Wheeler said, complicating the emergency response and endangering people who rely on electronic medical devices.
As wildfires, floods and other natural disasters continue to intensify due to the effects of climate change, figuring out how to make critical infrastructure more resilient has become a priority at both the state and local levels.
“I think it’s a really important responsibility of the city to do emergency planning and resiliency, and the federal government does too,” Wheeler said.
The city recently received a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to put microgrids on essential city facilities, which would allow them to retain power in the event of natural disasters that knock out power to part of the city or an intentional attack on the power grid. Federal mitigation funding from FEMA goes through the state Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, which itself it pursuing a grant for the development of a microgrid.
“We’ll be the first city in New Mexico to take on a project like this to use microgrids for resiliency,” Wheeler said.
Wheeler said the city got the idea for the project from the U.S. Department of Defense, which is already trying to figure out how to make its bases fully self-sustaining in the event of a prolonged power outage.
The city is still in the process of determining what facilities may be equipped with microgrids.
“We’re going to identify what are the key facilities we need to have running in an emergency and where can we use these microgrids to provide maximum services to the community,” Wheeler said.
City police and fire stations, the water and wastewater treatment plants and the Santa Fe Regional Airport, which would likely be used for water drops and medical transport in the event of an emergency, are all strong contenders.
“I definitely want to do the wastewater plant because with a megawatt of solar energy and their digester, they already have the energy they need to run off the grid,” Wheeler said.
The treatment plant on Paseo Real is one of more than 20 facilities equipped with solar panels as part of a project to reduce the city’s carbon footprint.
Wheeler said FEMA was excited by the idea when the city raised it as a grant opportunity and agreed to fund the assessment and design of the project, which will cost $500,000.
The actual construction of microgrids would likely cost about $20 million, and Wheeler said the agency has signaled it would be willing to fund that as well.
“It’s something FEMA has recognized as being a great idea so I think it’s something they’ll be supportive of,” said Brian Williams, director of the city Office of Emergency Management.
A major wildfire is the likeliest scenario that would cut off power, but lighting and flooding from thunderstorms, as seen in 2018, could also impact the grid, as could a terrorist attack.
Microgrids could also be useful in a scenario where the Public Service Company of New Mexico deliberately cuts power to a specific area of the grid to mitigate against wildfire on a high risk day, something PNM has signaled it would be willing to do.
Wheeler said other resiliency efforts the city is pursuing include putting battery backups on all city traffic signals so they will still function in the event of a power outage — multiple outages this summer have knocked out traffic lights — and exploring ways to keep water off of city streets in the event of heavy storms.
Funding drainage efforts is something the state is heavily prioritizing as post-fire flooding continues to post a risk to communities across New Mexico, said Jeremy Klass, chief of state Homeland Security’s Recovery and Mitigation Bureau. Because of the impacts of the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon and now the South Fork and Salt fires, “we are helping the federal government understand wildfires and post-fire flooding better,” Klass said.
Klass said climate change is leading to larger and more catastrophic wildfires as well as more intense storms during the state’s monsoon season. A century of wildfire suppression efforts in the West has also created a powder keg as climate change dries out large swaths of trees, he said, making them more vulnerable to catching fire and spreading out on control on dry and windy days.
He pointed to the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire as an example of “large-scale catastrophic wildfires we can’t necessarily fight, because they’re just too big — therefore we need to focus on mitigation strategies to ameliorate that situation.”
In a world where climate change is making natural disasters more costly, city officials say federal agencies investing more in mitigation and resiliency before any disaster even takes place is a smart strategy. According to FEMA calculations, Williams said, every $1 spent on mitigation is $4 saved on disaster recovery efforts.
However, he noted the losses caused by wildfires and other disasters go beyond the financial, something that has become a flashpoint in the long recovery effort from the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire as fire victims have alleged the federal government isn’t adequately taking into account the cultural value of what they lost.
“Can you put a dollar figure to the fact that someone’s childhood home burned to the ground?” Williams asked rhetorically. “There’s value to mitigation that transcends the brick and mortar.”
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