WASHINGTON – Federal officials, showing how quickly the Biden government is reshaping climate policy after years of denial by former President Donald J. Trump, intend to release up to $ 10 billion at the Federal Emergency Management Agency to protect against climate disasters before they attack.
The agency, best known for responding to hurricanes, floods and forest fires, wants to spend the money to protect itself preventively from damage by building walls, raising or relocating flood-prone homes and taking other measures as climate change intensifies storms and other natural disasters.
“This would overshadow all previous grant programs of this type,” said Daniel Kaniewski, a former deputy administrator at FEMA and now managing director of Marsh & McLennan Companies, a consulting firm.
The FEMA plan would use a budget maneuver to redirect a portion of the agency’s overall disaster spending to projects designed to protect against damage from climate disasters, according to people familiar with discussions within the agency.
Last year, FEMA took a leading role in the fight against Covid-19 – and the agency’s plan is to rely on Covid’s spending on the formula used to redirect money to climate projects. This would allow the Biden government to quickly and dramatically increase funding for climate resilience without Congressional action, generating a windfall that could increase funding more than six times.
Michael M. Grimm, FEMA’s interim administrator for disaster mitigation, said the agency’s initial estimates suggested that up to $ 3.7 billion could be available for the program, called Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC. In comparison, this program has so far only had $ 500 million in grants.
More of that $ 3.7 billion “may come,” said Grimm in a statement.
But the amount of new money could potentially rise to as much as $ 10 billion, according to some estimates, if FEMA also decided to count Covid’s dollars in a similar fund, the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, designed to help communities rebuild after a disaster. Mr. Grimm said that the decision to provide this funding has not yet been made.
The proposal would not necessarily reduce the money available to deal with Covid, according to people familiar with the plan. Instead, it would give FEMA the ability to withdraw additional money for resilience from the government’s disaster fund, which Congress routinely replenishes once the fund is withdrawn.
FEMA’s plan would need to be approved by the White House budget office. After Biden’s victory, members of his transition team said they saw the new financing as a way for the new government to deliver on its promise to tackle climate change.
A White House spokesman, Vedant Patel, did not respond to requests for comment.
The proposal marks an effort by the Biden government to address what experts call climate adaptation – an area of climate policy that is different from reducing greenhouse gas emissions and focuses on better protecting people, homes and communities from the consequences the warming of the planet. This includes more frequent and severe storms, floods and forest fires, as well as rising sea levels.
The United States has a mixed record on that front.
In many coastal states, home construction is increasing more rapidly in areas more prone to flooding, including places that may soon be submerged. And despite strong public support for stricter building codes in high-risk areas, only a third of local jurisdictions have adopted disaster-resistant provisions in their building codes.
In the face of rapidly escalating disaster costs, the Trump administration has taken steps to make communities more resilient to the effects of climate change, even though it refrains from using that term. FEMA and other agencies have increased their focus on getting people to move out of vulnerable areas, rather than always paying them to rebuild on the spot. And the agency urged Congress to create the BRIC program to help cities and states increase their preparedness before a disaster, rather than after.
But federal officials have also been hurt by Trump’s insistence that climate change has been exaggerated.
In 2018, when FEMA released its four-year strategic plan to deal with disasters, the words “climate change” were nowhere to be found. Facing year after year of record forest fires in California, Trump said the problem was too many leaves on the forest floor. Upon being told that rising temperatures are exacerbating the problem, Trump replied: “It will start to cool down. You just – you just watch. “
As a candidate, Biden promised to focus on adapting to the climate. And on his first day as president, he signed an order imposing higher construction standards on buildings or infrastructure in flood zones that are built with federal money. The order, first imposed by President Barack Obama, was rescinded by Trump.
Biden’s action has been praised by disaster groups. “This action restores a forward-looking policy that will help ensure that taxpayer dollars are not taken away by the next flood,” said Forbes Tompkins, who works on federal flood policy with Pew Charitable Trusts, a defense group, in an announcement .
But sending billions of dollars in new money to FEMA’s disaster programs would go beyond simply restoring Obama-era adaptation policies. The BRIC program was created after the brutal disaster season of 2017, when the United States was hit in rapid succession by hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, as well as by forest fires in California that were the worst in history. Federal disaster spending has skyrocketed.
A few months later, federal researchers reported that for every $ 1 the government spent to protect a community before a disaster, it saved $ 6 later. In 2018, Congress created the program to take advantage of these savings by providing more money in advance. The first scholarships were awarded this year.
If the Biden White House approves the plan, it could find allies in Congress, even among Republicans.
The use of Covid funds to increase this money has received bipartisan support in Congress in the past. In October, Congressman Peter A. DeFazio, Democratic chairman of the Chamber’s Transport and Infrastructure Committee, which has jurisdiction over FEMA, sent a letter to the agency urging it to use Covid’s money.
This letter was co-signed by Representative Sam Graves, the committee’s top Republican. But FEMA did not get permission from the Trump administration’s budget office, according to former employees.
The new money would present some challenges, according to people familiar with the program. State and local governments are expected to provide 25% of the cost of any projects, a particularly significant obstacle as Covid’s economic slowdown has devastated government budgets. And these employees would need to design projects on a scale large enough to make use of the new funds.
Still, it is worth seeking the extra funding, said Kaniewski, the former FEMA employee. “The more mitigation dollars, the better,” he said. “This is a taxpayer investment as good as you can find.”