City of Laguna Woods Climate Adaptation Plan

This report describes the assessment of how climate change will impact the city of Laguna Woods - a small city within Orange County, California - and provides climate adaptation strategies and policy objectives for how the city can best address these challenges. The plan indicates that 80% of people living in Laguna Woods are 65 years or more old and finds that older adults are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, such as extreme heat and severe weather.  

In order to determine the steps that the city needed to take in order to adapt to climate change, the plan makes use of the process suggested by the California Adaptation Planning guide and draws on data from Cal-Adapt.  

The report lists the outputs of their vulnerability assessment in chapter 2 and 3. It expresses particular concern for the problems that heat waves, extreme storms, and uncertain water supplies may pose for the community. The plan discusses the challenges and opportunities provided by the built environment. For example, the city’s organization around private residential communities supports social cohesion among neighbors and can create a centralized communication system to reach residents.  It also outlines existing programs that support climate adaptation goals, including a residential energy retrofit program and programs that support transit for older adults.

Laguna Woods is a community of primarily older residents. 80% are older than 65 years of age. Additionally, Laguna Woods median household income is significantly lower than the State of California or the rest of Orange County, which likely reflects that most residents are retired and on a fixed income.  This means that adaptation planning must be cognizant of the increased health risks older people face, especially as it relates to heat. Additionally, the plan cannot expect that residents have extra money to spend on upgrades. 


The plan offers several policy objectives for climate adaptation in Chapter 4 "Adaptation Strategies." The policy objectives for these strategies are to:

  • Maintain low levels of heat-related illness and death
  • Reduce wildfire impacts
  • Maintain electricity reliability and affordability through energy conservation, efficiency, and independence
  • Maintain potable water reliability and affordability through water conservation, efficiency, and independence
  • Demonstrate sustainable resource leadership
  • Institutionalize climate adaptation as a citywide priority
  • Develop regional, state, national, and private climate adaptation partnerships
  • Continually monitor and update this Climate Adaptation Plan

For each objective, the plan identifies specific implementation actions. For example, to reduce heat related illness the plans suggests adopting development standards to mitigate urban heat islands. For each action, the plan outlines the benefits, potential costs, what levels of coordination are required to complete the action, a suggested deliverable, and a description of what success would look like.

Chapter 5 contains a Work Plan for implementation of these strategies (see Table 8). The work plan includes the following information for each of the 17 implementation actions described in greater detail in Chapter 4:

- Costs and Coordination

- Potential Funding Sources

- Other Local Actions Implemented (Identifies whether an implementation action would also help to accomplish items in the General Plan Safety Element and/or the Local Hazard Mitigation Plan)

 

Publication Date: December 2014

Related Organizations:

  • City of Laguna Woods, California

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Resource Types:

  • Adaptation plan
  • Assessment

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