DENVER – Today, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, and Senior Advisor to the President and White House Infrastructure Coordinator Mitch Landrieu announced the project selections for nearly $3 billion in climate resilience funding as part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda. The selections, through two competitive grant programs, will help communities across the nation enhance resilience to climate change and extreme weather events.
Today’s selections include $1.8 billion for critical resilience projects funded by the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) national competition and $642 million for Flood Mitigation Assistance (FMA) community-scale flood mitigation projects. These selections build on $160 million in BRIC and FMA selections that FEMA announced in May for efforts to support mitigation projects, project scoping, and adoption of hazard-resistant building codes. Combined, the funds awarded this grant cycle of the BRIC and FMA programs total nearly $3 billion including management costs.
“Region 8 is thrilled to have nine projects for a total of $142,238,525.60 selected as part of this funding cycle,” said FEMA Region 8 Administrator Nancy Dragani. “These projects will increase resilience to natural disasters across our Region. Building resilience is a shared responsibility. Every level of government must work together to be successful, and we look forward to supporting these communities selected toward their goals.”
“From Hawaii to Maine, and everywhere in between, we are seeing the increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters, devastating communities nationwide. Though FEMA will always help communities respond and recover to these disasters, it is also paramount to build resilience before disasters strike,” said FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell. “Thanks to President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we have more resources than ever to meet this moment and provide our state, local, territorial, and tribal partners with the resources they need to help us create a more resilient nation.”
The top five primary hazard sources of the projects selected in the national competition for each program include flooding, infrastructure failure, fire, drought and dam or levee break hazards.
Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities
Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Utah received BRIC selections for a total of $77,290,396s
This includes critical mitigation projects and activities to reduce natural hazard risks for states, local communities, tribes and territories.
Project selections include a water pipeline project that connects treatment plants to enhance the resilience of the water system, building aqueduct resilience to a fault line, an active landslide and a history of pipeline failures, community relocation of power lines underground, upgrades to a raw water intake system for drought relief, and upgrades to a wastewater system to prepare for heavy precipitation events.
Learn more about these projects at the BRIC webpage on FEMA.gov.
Flood Mitigation Assistance
North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming received Flood Mitigation Assistance selections for a total of $64,948,129.
This funding will go towards flood control and individual property mitigation projects such as elevation, acquisitions and mitigation reconstruction of repetitively flood-damaged buildings insured by the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP).
Examples include flood risk reduction measures that will provide FEMA-accredited flood protection and allow properties to be removed from the 100-year regulatory floodplain, community upgrades to a levee system, and property that will be transformed into restored green space, and a stream restoration project.
Learn more about these projects at the Flood Mitigation Assistance webpage on FEMA.gov.
Direct Technical Assistance
Also announced in May, 46 local communities, tribes, and territories will receive non-financial direct technical assistance to help build community-wide resilience through the BRIC program. Through process-oriented, hands-on support, this assistance enhances a community’s capacity to design holistic, equitable climate adaptation solutions that advance numerous community-driven objectives. In Region 8, six Tribal Nations received this direct technical assistance.