The cancellation of the Trump administration of hundreds of dollars in subsidies for resilience projects through the building resistant infrastructure and communities program (Bric) leaves the destination of numerous resilience projects that are already in phases of planning and design in a state of uncertainty. FEMA says that the Bric program is finishing and that it cancels all the Bric applications of the 2020-23 prosecutor. As a result, it will terminate about $ 882 million in funding for resilience projects and programs.
Although the Trump administration established Bric in 2018, the program received a huge boost during the years, after Congress approved the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, which authorized a billion dollars specifically for the program for five years. The drop -down funds will now be returned to the United States Treasury or will be added to the $ 3.6 billion that are at the Agency’s Disaster Relief Fund for Disaster Response and Recovery Efforts.
A report from the National Institute of Building Sciences 2019 identified a $ 6 return investment for each public financing of dollars spent on early mitigation.
A FEMA spokesman described Bric as “another example of a fiesta and ineffective program … more concerned with political agendas than to help the north -American affected by natural disasters” in a statement on April 2.
The groups and entities involved in the increasingly detrimental storm planning that cause thousands of fatalities each year ensure that the funding responses are great. “We need more shocking investments based on construction resilience, no less,” says Todd Bridges, former head of the engineering engineers with engineers with United States Army engineers, and now a professor at the University of Georgia College of Engineering and the Instituting Infrastructure Systems Institute.
According to the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, the number of disasters that cause more than $ 1 billion in damage has been constantly increasing since 1980. As of 2024, more than 17,000 people have died in more than 400 disasters that caused at least a thousand dollars each in damage, costing the United States more than $ 2.9 trillion. At the same time, numerous studies have linked federal investment to prevent costs.
“I understand that we all have to worry about needing to squeeze every inverted value dollar in order to achieve resilience on the ground,” and that “every dollar must count,” says Bridges. But when you look at the total damage to infrastructure, buildings and the cost of human life, the impacts are “devastating”.
Louisiana and Florida only millions will be lost in a subsidy fund. Only a program that could be affected is a South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) group Channel flood reduction projects.
In June 2024, Bric awarded $ 150 million SFWMD on refund grants for three projects that the agency says with its sea level resilience program and flood resilience. The projects aim to address flood risk of both sea levels and extreme rainfall through the construction of flooding solutions and improvement throughout the basin.
Each of the three projects: the resilience of the C-7 basin, the resilience of the C-8 basin and the resilience of the C-9 basin, received about $ 50 million, according to SFWMD, which covered approximately 70% of the costs of the project. The other 30% was funded by non-federal interest, including SFWMD, Miami-Dade County and South Broward’s drainage district, through equal funds. The programs are currently in the design phase and construction has not yet begun.
In an email statement, a SFWMD spokesman said that the district “is still evaluating the impacts of the removal of FEMA Bric subsidies. No immediate decisions are needed at the moment because we are still designing projects and we have not started construction.”
But the financing pegs are amazing for many. “The decision to dismantle the largest pre-steak mitigation program is out of recklessness,” said Chad Berginnis, executive director of the State Plate Managers Association. “Cutting the funding of projects is already underway will leave the states and communities that are climbed, increasing the risk of disasters for families and businesses instead of reducing it.”
Bridges states that the main infrastructure programs are not built during the night. “This is urgent and must be a long -term investment strategy.”
