Climatewire | Over the past decade, when extreme weather conditions have killed nearly 700 people in Texas, the state has given up $ 225 million in federal grants it was supposed to spend to protect residents against disasters, according to federal files.
The money came from a special federal program in the event of a disaster that has given billions of dollars to states for projects such as flood protection, tornado safety and the type of warning systems that could have saved some of the 129 people killed during the recent Sudden Texas floods. Texas had rejected two requests from the flooded county for a small part of the federal money to set up a flood warning system.
But Texas, like most states, has chosen not to spend an important part of its mitigation subsidy. The States have regularly let the government recover unspected money – or leave the money available not to be used up to 20 years, according to an analysis of the federal files of E & E News in politico.
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In addition to giving in the $ 225 million, Texas has not spent $ 505 million from $ 820 million – 62% – which he obtained for mitigation projects almost eight years ago after Hurricane Harvey killed $ 89 and caused $ 160 billion in damage. The funds remain available.
Uncourted money highlights a central defect in the country’s approach to protect itself against climate change: the federal government gives states and communities for money and responsibility for the protection of disasters. However, states and communities often do not have staff and expertise to spend it fully.
Since July 2015, the federal risk subsidy program has taken states with more than $ 23 billion to protect their counties, neighborhoods and homes against future disasters. The subsidies were automatically granted after each federal declared disaster and are separated from the federal money which pays the cleaning and reconstruction of disasters.
But nearly $ 21 billion in the grant remains unassigned, said News, leaving people vulnerable to fatal floods, winds and forest fires that climate change is intensifying. Part of the grant has been allocated in recent years, but most have been allocated over three years ago.
During the same period since 2015, states have also abandoned a total of $ 1.4 billion in mitigation grant funding which had been approved, but the states have never spent.
The figure includes the $ 225 million that Texas has abandoned in the past 10 years, while the government has closed a series of partially spent risk mitigation subsidies since 2001. The subsidies have been worth a total of $ 850 million, which means that Texas did not spend more than a quarter of money. More recently, on April 29, Texas sold $ 5.7 million in an attenuation subsidy of $ 13 million he obtained in 2016.
“It is a lost opportunity to strengthen resilience,” said Peter Gaynor, who headed the Federal Emergency Management Agency from 2019 to 2021. FEMA operates the mitigation subsidy program.
“What is happening over and over and many times is that mitigation money becomes a reflection afterwards,” said Gaynor.
The Texas Emergency Management Division, which manages the FEMA mitigation subsidies, has not answered questions on unused money directly.
Andrew Mahaleris, spokesperson for Governor Greg Abbott (R), said in a statement: “The state continues to pay the financing of the HMGP, because the subsidies are granted and encourages local officials to apply.”
The great amount of the money in the unsustated risks prompted President Donald Trump in April to stop approving new allowances, a decision that made certain state representatives.
A spokesperson for FEMA said the agency now helped states to “identify projects and reduce sales in a way that makes nation more resilient, while protecting dollars from American taxpayers in a responsible manner.”
Trump has assailed the FEMA since its entry into office, but on Friday had unusual praise when he visited the damaged area in Texas. “FEMA has really been led by very good people,” said Trump.
Although states have automatically received a FEMA subsidy after each disaster, spending money has sometimes been excruciating. FEMA must generally approve each project funded by subsidies.
“It is such a heavy process,” said David Fogerson, who directed the management of emergencies and internal security of Nevada from 2020 to 2024.
States and communities – or their entrepreneurs – must submit detailed plans showing that a project is achievable, is in accordance with environmental and preservation laws and has its financially meaning. States, counties and municipalities must also have a written plan – generally a few hundred pages and updated every five years – showing its general strategy to reduce damage to disasters.
A government government report in 2021 revealed that state representatives were “extremely dissatisfied” in the request process.
“It becomes almost an overload when you try to manage the disaster, then you try to measure how to protect against the next disaster,” said Fogerson.
Nevada spent only a quarter of the Hazard subsidy of $ 3.4 million he obtained from FEMA after a forest fire in 2016, according to the files.
“It is a blessing and a curse,” said Fogerson about the grant.
Federal funds rarely used for warning systems
The county of Kerr, Texas, the Sudden Flood site which started on July 4, met the administrative glove in 2016 when he asked the State in 2016 and 2018 for a small piece of FEMA attenuation money to establish a flood alert system.
Warning systems are a crucial but shallow part of global strategies to protect against natural risks, especially in places subject to sudden floods, which occur when sudden and intense precipitation cause an overflow of rivers.
Texas officials examine the limited warnings that have been transmitted while the Guadalupe river jumped in the middle of the night and devoured areas, including a sleeping camp for girls where at least 27 campers and advisers were killed.
In Kerrville, Texas, which was at the sudden flood center, municipal director Dalton Rice promised on Saturday “a complete examination of the response in the event of a disaster”.
Trump staff discounts and the budgetary discounts offered at National Weather Service offices have triggered their own alarms that inadequate weather alerts will increase the number of disasters.
Kerr’s county’s county request was refused in 2016 by the Texas emergency management division because the county did not have the required attenuation plan.
When the county of 50,000 people in the center of Texas Hill Country again applied after Hurricane Harvey, the State denied the request after having decided to spend the whole subsidy in the counties damaged by Harvey.
“If the localities do not meet federal requirements, they will not be able to access funding. The state works with candidates to support efforts to comply, “said Mahaleris, spokesperson for Governor Abbott.
The Texas legislature will convene a special session on July 21 to examine new laws that would improve warning systems in areas subject to floods.
“We are going to work on each solution to make sure that things like this do not happen,” Abbott said on Friday.
Despite the importance of warning systems and their moderate cost, the States spent only a small quantity of their mitigation subsidies installing them, according to the analysis of the federal files of News.
Most of the grant went to the protection of floods, generally for individual properties. About 4.5 billion dollars were given to house owners in coastal areas or on the River subjects to floods to raise their house above the flood level or to buy the property, demolish the house and leave the vacant land, according to E & E News analysis. Each project costs federal taxpayers around $ 250,000.
On the other hand, the States spent only $ 275 million in warning systems.
“The cost of warning systems in proportion to other flood mitigation activities is relatively cheaper,” said Chad Berginnis, Executive Director of the Association of State Floodpain Managers. “For a small community, it could be a siren and an evaluation device that is linked to this. It could end up being cheaper than a buyout. ”
Low -income nations like Bangladesh have spent a lot on flood warning systems, said Sarah Labowitz, a senior member of the Endowment for International Peace who studies disasters.
“They do it without many resources,” said Labowitz. “We should learn from other places and invest in early alert systems.”
But a problem with the use of FEMA mitigation money for warning systems is that their advantages are almost impossible to quantify, said Berginnis.
FEMA generally requires proof that a mitigation project funded by its grants has a positive-hole ratio. Although the agency has exceptions for certain projects such as warning systems, FEMA requires that the warning systems funded by subsidies are part of a risk reduction plan “planned, adopted and exercised”.
Berginnis has recognized that states are struggling to pass their mitigation subsidies. But he opposes Trump’s recent decisions not to approve new grants.
“Attenuation occurs when people are receptive to attenuation, and they are the most receptive to do so overnight to do so, end. We miss a key opportunity to do so,” said Berginnis.
Reprinted with E & E News With the permission of politico, LLC. Copyright 2025. E & E News provides essential news to energy and environmental professionals.
