Cuts to FEMA's storm prep program hit communities that voted for Trump

Yahoo

5 hours ago

A lifelong resident of Louisiana, Wade Evans has learned a lot about floods, including this: the water doesn't care about your politics. The mayor of Central — a community of about 30,000 outside of Baton Rouge — Evans and his family were forced to evacuate their home by boat in 2016 when flooding from torrential rains destroyed 60% of the structures in town.
"Flood water doesn't discriminate," said Evans, a Republican and supporter of President Trump. '"Any person that flooded is shocked that it would be considered politics to do flood mitigation."
So when he received word in April that FEMA was canceling a grant program that would provide nearly $40 million for a new flood control system in Central, he was angry. In a press release, FEMA said the program, which provided funding for infrastructure projects in storm-prone communities, was "wasteful" and had become "more concerned with political agendas than helping Americans recover from natural disasters."
"To me, it's a brilliant business decision," said Evans, who said the drainage project in Central would have saved money in the long run by protecting houses that routinely sustain flood damage FEMA ultimately ends up covering. "And then they pulled the rug out from under us."
Evans and Central aren't alone. Amid the avalanche of cuts made in the first five months of the Trump administration, none may have red state politicians more up in arms than the cancellation of the infrastructure program, which is formally known as Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC for short.
The $4.6 billion initiative was launched under the first Trump administration, and a CBS News analysis of FEMA data revealed that two-thirds of the counties awarded grants voted for President Trump over former Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 election.
Trump administration officials said they will claw back about $3.6 million that has already been awarded but not yet spent, sending it back to the U.S. Treasury. Projects that are now stalled as a result range from a plan to elevate six buildings on the main street in Pollocksville, North Carolina — population less than 300 — to a $50 million project to prevent flash flooding in New York City.
"Under Secretary Noem's leadership, we are ending non-mission critical programs," a FEMA spokesperson said in a statement to CBS News, writing that the BRIC program was "wasteful and ineffective" and "more concerned with climate change" than providing help to Americans affected by storms.
"We are committed to ensuring that Americans in crisis can get the help and resources they need," the spokesperson wrote.
The data suggests the elimination of the BRIC program will especially deprive vulnerable communities across the Southeast. In Florida, 18 of the 22 counties that stood to benefit from nearly $250 million in grants voted for Mr. Trump. Elsewhere in North Carolina, grants were canceled in areas ravaged by Hurricane Helene last year.
Spokespeople for the White House, the Department of Homeland Security, and FEMA did not comment on the data findings.
The scale of the cuts in ruby-red Louisiana — 34 grants totalling $185 million — prompted the state's Republican senior senator, Bill Cassidy, to publicly condemn the decision to cancel the program.
"We passed BRIC into law and provided funds for it," said Cassidy in a speech on the Senate floor in April. "To do anything other than use that money to fund flood mitigation projects is to thwart the will of Congress."
Last month, Cassidy joined more than 80 members of Congress in writing a letter to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, begging the administration to reinstate the program and arguing that not doing so "will only make it harder and more expensive for communities to recover from the next storm."
In the letter, the bipartisan group of lawmakers cited research that showed every dollar invested in disaster mitigation can save up to $18 in response and recovery expenditures after a storm hits.
"It was a thousand-year flood"
In August 2016, it started raining in Central and did not stop for days. It rained so much, the town found itself in the center of the fourth-most costly flood event in U.S. history. Twenty-four inches of rain fell over a 48-hour period. Floodwaters cut off all roadway access and communications.
"Central is located in a floodplain, so we're used to flooding, we're equipped to handle it, but this was something different," said Evans. "It was a thousand-year flood."
Video from the event is staggering. Roads turned to waterways, forcing the entire town to evacuate. President Trump and then-Vice President Mike Pence toured the damage when the waters receded.
"They were so gracious," said Evans. "I was left with the impression that they had our backs."
Evans took a job selling cabinets, not to make money, he said, but because he saw a need. In doing so, he saw the slow pace of recovery firsthand, and his frustration motivated him to get into politics.
"Many people didn't have flood insurance, and the despair in their eyes is what got me into politics," said Evans, who was elected to the city council in 2018 and then mayor four years later. "I said somebody's gotta do a better job."
While in office, Evans said he has prioritized mitigation, building a new modeling system that can warn residents ahead of time of a major flood event. Yet the opportunity to supercharge Central's recovery — and ward off the next flood disaster — came with the FEMA infrastructure program. Evans enlisted the help of his GOP congressman to help secure a grant.
The $39 million in funding was awarded in July 2024 and was going to be used for three new basins that could collect water when, not if, Central flooded again.
"Essentially, the center of our city has a flood control problem," said Evans. "This is an area of repetitive flood losses."
Earlier this month, Evans traveled to Washington, D.C., where he met with Louisiana lawmakers, including Rep. Steve Scalise and Sen. John Kennedy, to try to get the grant's cancellation reversed. And while he said he found a sympathetic audience, he was told ultimately the decision must come from the White House.
"It's time to put the bomb away and pull out the scalpel," said Evans. "Don't blow a program up that's very good. This is a very good program."
"We need that support"
Officials from five other cities across the Southeast told CBS News they were counting on funds from the BRIC program to avoid a repeat of past storm destruction, including Conway, South Carolina, part of a county President Trump decisively won in 2024.
After the city experienced extensive flooding damage from successive hurricanes in 2015, 2016 and 2018, it took small steps to mitigate flooding by demolishing properties in its most flood-prone areas. A major step forward came when Conway was awarded a $2.1 million BRIC grant in 2021 to turn a new greenspace into a stormwater storage facility.
"We've plucked all the low-hanging fruit there is for flood resilience," said City Administrator Adam Emrick, who added that Conway didn't have the financial capacity to implement any larger projects without federal help. "The next step is always and has always been bigger construction projects to make us a better, more hardened infrastructure to flooding."
The project was split up into two phases — an engineering and planning phase, and a construction phase. But when the Trump administration canceled the BRIC program in April, Conway had only completed 75% of the first phase, and they'd yet to break ground on the facility.
According to Emrick, the future of the facility is now in flux, as the city hasn't identified a backup funding source. He said the city plans to move forward and complete the first phase without the federal funding to ensure the project is "shovel ready." That way, in case something changes with grant funding, they'll be ready to work.
Following its decision to cancel the BRIC program, FEMA said it would be "reaching out and coordinating" with applicants whose projects were already underway. Yet Conway hasn't received any communication from the agency.
"We need that support from the federal government to make these projects happen so that our residents can continue to live in neighborhoods, and they don't have to see this increase of potential storm water being in their homes ever again," said June Wood, a spokesperson for the city.
The tiny town of Pollocksville — located in a rural North Carolina county that went heavily for President Trump in 2024 — is also facing uncertainty following the Trump administration's decision to cancel BRIC grants. FEMA had officially awarded the community a $1 million grant in June 2024 to elevate and flood-proof six commercial properties along Main Street that had been damaged by Hurricane Florence in 2018 and left vacant ever since.
The administration's decision to eliminate BRIC came four days before Pollocksville officials were scheduled to sign a contract with the construction company they had hired for the work. FEMA had said projects like Pollocksville's that had completed the procurement process and were set to start construction could still receive funding, but Pollocksville Mayor Jay Bender said the town is still waiting to hear from the agency.
"All we're trying to do is make our town a better place to live, work and play, and it just hurts when you've made plans and you're doing things the right way and the money or the grant stops," said Bender.
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