CIRCA Climate Summit focuses on resilient Connecticut

The Connecticut Institute for Resilience and Climate Adaptation, or CIRCA, is trying to better protect our communities by addressing climate impacts in Connecticut.

An event was held at Avery Point on Long Island Sound in November, with the goal of working toward a more resilient Connecticut, and preparing future generations for climate change.

One focus: Flooding in low lying areas. CIRCA Executive Director Jim O’Donnell said they’re exploring flood sensors when waters rise.

“So an automatic alert system, which we could implement, that would alert people through emails, or flashing lights, or something, could be a low-cost, near-term, quickly-implementable solution that is not perfect, but it reduces disruption and the cost associated with it,” O’Donnell said.

Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, or DEEP, points to its climate resilience fund. Commissioner Katie Dykes said communities can get grant funding to do a climate risk assessment and even fund an actual project.

“So this is about helping communities figure out what they need instead of having communities, which I hear a lot in the resilience space, have to navigate a whole alphabet soup of different programs and priorities to come up with solutions that might or might not be a good fit,” Dykes said.

State Representative John Michael Parker, chair of the Environment Committee, acknowledges that it’s expensive for these projects to increase resiliency.

“We know that it can take a lot of money to invest in the scale of the resilience projects that are required, so we have some new innovative tax structures and finance structures to help individual towns and regions to help budget for it and take on these costs,” Parker said.

Soon, you’ll get more flood information when buying a home in Connecticut, with information on flood risk and insurance options. This is being implemented after last August’s floods.