Drinking Water Utilities Climate Risk Index

 It's an index that's been calculated, but isn't an online calculator ("Tapping into risk in America’s drinking water" Carnegie Mellon University, "Climate change risk index and municipal bond disclosures of United States drinking water utilities," Nature)

By cross-referencing 1,455 medium and large water utilities across the country with what those utilities reported in their bond disclosures (financial documents that show investors the risks associated with lending money to these utilities), the study finds a gap between the actual climate risk and the risk reported in their disclosures.

Utilities serving 67 million people were rated as high risk, but more than a third of their bonds (36%) do not mention climate change, leaving communities exposed to potentially unsafe drinking water during extreme weather events and investors unaware of hidden financial liabilities. The municipal bonds studied represent $39.3 billion in debt, most of which will mature within the next 20 years. Of that total, $9.2 billion was issued by utilities identified as having high risk to climate change, but with limited evidence of climate risk awareness.

Interestingly, in Utah there is a bill pending in the legislature calling for a tax on water use to fund big new water infrastructure projects, but the projects haven't been vetted in terms of overall water use planning ("Utah bill to address water infrastructure needs advances, but not everyone's happy with it," KSL) and they presume future water supplies which may not come to fruition, given Western drought.   

Utah has amongst the lowest water rates, because they are in part subsidized by property taxes.

‘The Lake, directed by Abby Ellis, details the precipitous decline of the Great Salt Lake.’ Photograph: Courtesy of Sundance Institute

And while not related to drinking water, but to use of water overall and the impact on the shrinking Great Salt Lake ("‘An environmental nuclear bomb’: documentary examines fight to save Great Salt Lake," "Great Salt Lake’s retreat poses a major fear: poisonous dust clouds," Guardian), the state seems to be seeking the federal government out to be the savior.  

But the federal government has negligible additional powers to act--the state has plenty ("Trump promises to work with Utah to make its salt lake ‘great again’").

From the Guardian:

The lake, often called “America’s Dead Sea” (though it is, in fact, four times larger than its counterpart in the Middle East), hit a record low in 2022, having lost 73% of its water and 60% of its surface area from excess diversion for agriculture and other water use.

The new film [The Lake] warns, in no uncertain terms, that going over the edge would spell catastrophe for the state’s public health, environment and economy.

Toxic dust clouds laden with mercury, arsenic and selenium from the desiccated lakebed would increase pollution for a city whose air quality is already worse than Los Angeles, provoking a respiratory and other cancer-related issues. Birdlife and recreation on the lake, already disappearing with its surface area – now less than 1,000 square miles, down from three times that in the 1980s – would vanish completely. The lake’s disappearance would inflict billions of dollars of economic damage on the region, imperil the lucrative extraction of minerals from the lakebed, and threaten ski conditions at the numerous resorts in the nearby mountains (including the slopes of Park City, looming over the film’s premiere).

Three years ago, Abbott, along with more than 30 other scientists, co-authored a report warning that absent major intervention, the 11,000-year-old Great Salt Lake would disappear within five years.