CLIMATEWIRE | Previously decade, as excessive climate killed almost 700 individuals in Texas, the state relinquished $225 million in federal grant cash that it was imagined to spend on defending residents from disasters, federal data present.
The cash had come from a particular federal catastrophe program that is given states billions of {dollars} for initiatives similar to flood safety, twister security and the kind of warning methods that might have saved a few of the 129 individuals killed in Texas’ latest flash flooding. Texas had rejected two requests from the flooded county for a small portion of the federal cash to arrange a flood-warning system.
However Texas, like most states, has chosen to not spend a big chunk of its mitigation grant cash. States routinely let the federal government reclaim unspent cash — or let out there cash go unused for so long as 20 years, in response to an evaluation of federal data by POLITICO’s E&E Information.
On supporting science journalism
In case you’re having fun with this text, contemplate supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By buying a subscription you might be serving to to make sure the way forward for impactful tales concerning the discoveries and concepts shaping our world in the present day.
Along with ceding the $225 million, Texas has not spent $505 million of the $820 million — 62 % — that it bought for mitigation initiatives almost eight years in the past after Hurricane Harvey killed 89 individuals and brought about $160 billion in injury, data present. The funds stay out there.
The unspent cash highlights a central flaw within the nation’s method to defending in opposition to local weather change: The federal authorities offers states and communities each cash and accountability for catastrophe safety. But states and communities usually lack the personnel and experience to spend it absolutely.
Since July 2015, the federal Hazard Mitigation Grant Program has showered states with greater than $23 billion to guard their counties, neighborhoods and houses in opposition to future catastrophe injury. The grants have been given routinely after every federally declared catastrophe and are separate from the federal cash that pays for catastrophe cleanup and rebuilding.
However almost $21 billion of the grant cash stays unspent, E&E Information discovered, leaving individuals susceptible to the lethal flooding, winds and wildfires that local weather change is intensifying. Among the grant cash was awarded lately, however most was awarded greater than three years in the past.
In the identical interval since 2015, states additionally relinquished a complete of $1.4 billion in mitigation grant funding that had been accepted however states by no means spent.
The determine consists of the $225 million that Texas gave up over the previous 10 years as the federal government closed a collection of partially spent hazard mitigation grants it had awarded the state since 2001. The grants have been price a complete of $850 million, which implies Texas didn’t spend greater than 1 / 4 of the cash. Most lately, on April 29, Texas ceded $5.7 million of a $13 million mitigation grant it bought in 2016.
“It’s a misplaced alternative to construct resilience,” mentioned Peter Gaynor, who ran the Federal Emergency Administration Company from 2019 to 2021. FEMA operates the mitigation grant program.
“What occurs time and time once more is mitigation cash turns into an afterthought,” Gaynor mentioned.
The Texas Division of Emergency Administration, which handles the FEMA mitigation grants, didn’t reply on to questions on unspent cash.
Andrew Mahaleris, a spokesperson for Gov. Greg Abbott (R), mentioned in a press release, “The State continues to disburse HMGP funding as grants are awarded and encourages native officers to use.”
The massive quantity of unspent hazard mitigation cash prompted President Donald Trump in April to cease approving new allocations, a transfer that angered some state officers.
A FEMA spokesperson mentioned the company is now serving to states “determine initiatives and draw down balances in a means that makes the nation extra resilient, whereas additionally responsibly safeguarding American taxpayer {dollars}.”
Trump has assailed FEMA since taking workplace however on Friday supplied uncommon reward when he visited the broken space in Texas. “FEMA has been actually headed by some excellent individuals,” Trump mentioned.
Though states had routinely obtained FEMA grant cash after every catastrophe, spending the cash has been excruciating at instances. FEMA sometimes should approve every grant-funded undertaking.
“It’s such a cumbersome course of,” mentioned David Fogerson, who ran Nevada’s emergency administration and homeland safety company from 2020 to 2024.
States and communities — or their contractors — should submit detailed plans displaying {that a} undertaking is possible, complies with environmental and preservation legal guidelines and is smart financially. States, counties and municipalities additionally should have a written plan — sometimes a few hundred pages and up to date each 5 years — displaying its broad technique to cut back catastrophe injury.
A Authorities Accountability Workplace report in 2021 discovered that state officers have been “overwhelmingly dissatisfied” with the applying course of.
“It virtually turns into overload if you’re attempting to handle the catastrophe and you then’re attempting to measure methods to defend in opposition to the subsequent catastrophe,” Fogerson mentioned.
Nevada has spent solely 1 / 4 of the $3.4 million hazard grant it bought from FEMA after a wildfire in 2016, data present.
“It’s a blessing and a curse,” Fogerson mentioned of the grant cash.
Federal funds hardly ever used for warning methods
Kerr County, Texas, the location of the flash flooding that started July 4, encountered the executive gantlet in 2016 when it requested the state in 2016 and in 2018 for a small piece of its FEMA mitigation cash to determine a flood warning system.
Warning methods are an important however low-profile a part of worldwide methods to guard in opposition to pure hazards, significantly in locations vulnerable to flash flooding, which happens when sudden, intense precipitation causes rivers to overflow.
Texas officers are scrutinizing the restricted warnings that have been transmitted because the Guadalupe River surged in the midst of the evening and devoured areas together with a women’ sleepaway camp the place at the least 27 campers and counselors have been killed.
In Kerrville, Texas, which was on the heart of the flash flooding, Metropolis Supervisor Dalton Rice on Saturday pledged “a full assessment of the catastrophe response.”
Trump’s employees reductions and proposed price range cuts to the Nationwide Climate Service places of work have set off their very own alarms that insufficient climate alerts will improve the quantity of disaster-related deaths.
Kerr County’s request for grant cash was denied in 2016 by the Texas Division of Emergency Administration as a result of the county didn’t have the required mitigation plan.
When the county of fifty,000 individuals in central Texas Hill Nation utilized once more after Hurricane Harvey, the state denied the applying after deciding to spend all of the grant cash in Harvey-damaged counties.
“If localities don’t meet federal necessities, they will be unable to entry the funding. The State works with candidates to assist efforts to convey them into compliance,” mentioned Mahaleris, the spokesperson for Gov. Abbott.
The Texas Legislature will convene a particular session July 21 to think about new legal guidelines that will enhance warning methods in flood-prone areas.
“We will work on each single answer to ensure issues like this do not occur,” Abbott mentioned Friday.
Regardless of the significance of warning methods and their reasonable price, states have spent solely a tiny quantity of their mitigation grants putting in them, E&E Information’ evaluation of federal data exhibits.
The biggest chunk of grant cash has gone to flood safety, often for particular person properties. Roughly $4.5 billion has been given to householders in flood-prone coastal or riverside areas to raise their home above flood degree or to purchase the property, demolish the house and depart the land vacant, E&E Information’ evaluation exhibits. Every undertaking prices federal taxpayers roughly $250,000.
Against this, states have spent simply $275 million on warning methods.
“The price of warning methods proportionately to different flood mitigation actions is comparatively cheaper,” mentioned Chad Berginnis, government director of the Affiliation of State Floodplain Managers. “For a small neighborhood, it could possibly be a siren and a gauging equipment that’s tied to that. That might find yourself being cheaper than one buyout.”
Low-income nations similar to Bangladesh have spent closely on flood-warning methods, mentioned Sarah Labowitz, a senior fellow on the Carnegie Endowment for Worldwide Peace who research disasters.
“They’re doing that with out plenty of assets,” Labowitz mentioned. “We ought to be studying from different locations and investing in early warning methods.”
However one downside with utilizing FEMA mitigation cash for warning methods is that their advantages are almost not possible to quantify, Berginnis mentioned.
FEMA typically requires proof {that a} mitigation undertaking funded with its grants has a optimistic benefit-cost ratio. Though the company makes exceptions for some initiatives similar to warning methods, FEMA requires grant-funded warning methods to be a part of a “deliberate, adopted, and exercised danger discount plan.”
Berginnis acknowledged that states battle to spend their mitigation grants. However he opposes Trump’s latest choices to not approve new grants.
“Mitigation occurs when individuals are receptive to doing mitigation, and they’re probably the most receptive to doing it within the speedy aftermath to do it, interval. We’re lacking a key alternative to try this,” Berginnis mentioned.
Reprinted from E&E Information with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E Information offers important information for vitality and surroundings professionals.
