The Chehalis Basin Board on Thursday, May 1, heard from a representative of the Washington state Department of Ecology on how the recent cancellation of the federal Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant program might impact the board’s efforts.
During the meeting, Jennifer Hennessey, a member of the Chehalis Basin Board representing the state Department of Ecology, spoke with the board about the immediate impacts of funding cancelations on flood prevention projects in Aberdeen and Hoquiam. She focused on her department and the state’s efforts to appeal the cancellation of federal grant funding for the North Shore Levee Project in Aberdeen, among other local projects, and ongoing efforts to quantify future impacts.
The Department of Ecology began working with the governor’s office and Washington’s representatives in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives last month to convey the importance of current BRIC funded projects.
Last week, Gov. Bob Ferguson sent letters to the acting administrator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Cameron Hamilton to specifically appeal canceled funding for seven flood control projects throughout the state of Washington, with one letter dedicated to projects in Aberdeen, Hoquiam and Westport that would construct two levees and a tsunami evacuation structure.
The letter described the importance of ongoing projects and the widespread impact the funding cancellation will have in Washington, especially on small towns and rural communities.
“In Washington state alone, 28 projects have been affected, with 72 percent of funding dedicated to supporting small towns and rural communities,” the letter from Ferguson reads. “The communities of Aberdeen, Hoquiam and Westport support the effort to cut waste, fraud and abuse in all levels of government. However, terminating this funding will leave this community more vulnerable to devastating disaster events and will significantly undercut their ability to build resilience in a fiscally responsible manner.”
First rounds of funding to address flooding in Aberdeen, Hoquiam and Westport began in 2015. The project most recently received $35 million in funding from the state for the 2023-2025 funding period through a request by the Office of the Chehalis Basin. The BRIC program awarded $50 million for the North Shore Levee and $47.5 million for the North Shore Levee West during the 2020-2023 BRIC program.
FEMA announced that it would cancel the BRIC program on April 4. That included reappropriating funds from the programs 2020-2023 activity that had not yet been distributed. As the North Shore Levee had yet to begin construction and had just received approval in March after a 18- to 24-month environmental planning and historical preservation review, the project will lose out on more than $80 million in BRIC funding that had yet to be spent.
The BRIC program was originally created during President Domald Trump’s first term in office through the Disaster Recovery Reform Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 2018. The program was designed to fund natural disaster mitigation projects starting in 2020 and replaced an earlier initiative called the pre-disaster mitigation program.
According to an announcement from FEMA, approximately $882 million in funding made available to the BRIC program through the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will go back to the U.S. Treasury or be given to Congress to be apportioned in its next budget.
In the same announcement, FEMA included that more than $3.6 billion will stay in the Disaster Relief Fund for disaster response efforts.
During the Chehalis Basin Board’s meeting, Ken Ghalambor, the board’s facilitator, asked Hennessey and Hoquiam City Administrator Brian Shay if they knew of other promising funding opportunities for the North Shore Levee or future flood damage reduction projects.
Hennessey was hesitant to depend on any specific funding and said she and her team were concerned about changes to FEMA funding that might make funding more sparse both for post event disaster response and for disaster mitigation.
“I would say the overall picture at the federal level is not great,” Hennessey said. “I do know there are some other grants that are through NOAA that have been around resilience … There’s a lot of uncertainty around which, if any, of those grant programs will remain in the future.”
Shay showed optimism toward potential funding for the project, making it clear that the City of Hoquiam would be ready to take advantage of any funding made available.
“We continue to pursue every opportunity to see the federal funding to the end,” Shay said. “I mean we remain confident that, one way or the other, it will get worked out and we’ll be ready to accept that funding, and I know that emergency management at the state is taking that same approach, so we’re working with everyone at the federal level, state level to make it happen and we’re staying positive.”
As the state, the Office of the Chehalis Basin and local governments try to solve problems and find ways to keep their programs moving forward despite the loss in funding, the Washington State Emergency Management Division is attempting to quantify how the cancellation of the program might impact future disaster mitigation projects, but that report has not been made available to the public.
Impacts in Southwest Washington are hard to quantify. One project in Pacific County designed to reduce coastal flooding and address erosion near Tokeland, North Cove and the Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe also suffered from the funding cancellation. About $15.2 million in federal funding is now uncertain.
Future projects in the Upper Chehalis Basin, including those designed to mitigate flooding in the Centralia and Chehalis region, would likely have been eligible for funding under the BRIC program. But the delivery of any of these mitigation improvements is too far in the future to know how construction will be funded and if the canceled BRIC program will impact the future of those projects.
