There is much discussion in the literature about the need to balance abilities to respond to short-term and long-term risks among water systems. Yet our understanding of what contributes to our ability to respond to acute as well as long-term change is challenged by insufficient empirical work on water systems to date. We begin to fill this gap through an examination of the capacities of community water systems to absorb short-term shocks as well as to learn from them and act to reduce future risks. We investigated these capacities and how they interact using interviews (n=24) and a survey (n=85) of Connecticut community water systems. We found most systems have increased their capacity to respond to short-term risks and most have some (but differing levels) of capacity for learning from those experiences. However, few are preparing adequately for future risks. We present opportunities for reducing this gap.