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Climate Change and Other Uncertainties Could Have a Significant Impact on the Success of Water Quality Plans

• In both pilot regions studied, total maximum daily load (TMDL) watershed implementation plans expected to meet water quality standards if future climate resembles the past do not meet these standards over a wide range of plausible future climate conditions.
• An increase in the amount of paved or impervious area cover due to future population growth, as well as worse-than-anticipated performance from stormwater best management practices (BMPs), could also lead to missing future standards.

Rainfall-Runoff Simulation Models Can Provide Useful Information for TMDL Planning Under Deep Uncertainty

• Used within a Robust Decision Making (RDM) framework, these models can help decisionmakers explore the performance of TMDL plans across many plausible paths into the future.

Currently Available Simulation Models Are Suitable to Support RDM Analyses, but Much Could Be Done to Improve Their Utility

• Treatment of BMP performance in the rainfall-runoff models could be improved, with better accounting for uncertainty related to BMP effectiveness.
• Models could be streamlined to better integrate with simulations of a more complete range of biophysical and socioeconomic processes and to facilitate scanning over many possible futures.