Strange days have found us. This past April 4, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced it was ending the “wasteful, politicized grant program” known as BRIC, or Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, and in the process canceling all BRIC grant applications for the fiscal years 2020–2023. Note the starting year.

BRIC was established in 2018 through the Disaster Recovery Reform Act of 2018, during the first Trump administration. FEMA launched BRIC’s first round of funding in 2020 to “help communities proactively reduce their vulnerability to natural hazard events” and effectively act as FEMA’s climate mitigation arm, dolling out grants to states, municipalities and Tribal Nations in need before disaster struck. Then beginning in 2021, the Biden administration tapped into BRIC’s broader potential by committing to award $200 million a year in BRIC grants through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and authorizing FEMA to prioritize the purchase of low-carbon, U.S.-made building materials through the Inflation Reduction Act and Federal Buy Clean Initiative.

In past years and funding cycles, FEMA oversaw similar efforts to facilitate state-run efforts to update building codes and code inspection training, provide technical assistance to eligible BRIC applicants, and allocate funds for FEMA-designated Community Disaster Resilience Zones. (It’s worth noting that dozens of landing pages and fact sheets detailing these initiatives have been wiped off FEMA’s website, although the program’s Obligations Dashboard is still active.)

As of last month, any and all federal funds earmarked for community resiliency and disaster preparedness efforts—including many ongoing projects that have received partial funding to date—have been eliminated. Approximately $750 million in BRIC grants were originally planned for FY 2025, marking a significant drop from preceding years. But that detail is moot now. So who does this impact?

Tracking dollars lost

The communities across most U.S. states impacted by this funding withdrawal are too many to count. But a few noteworthy case studies highlight how crucial this grant program has become of late.

In coastal Grays Harbor County, Wash., a years-long initiative to design, permit, and build a levee—known as the North Shore Levee Project—to protect low-lying sections of the towns of Aberdeen and Hoquiam has been stripped of $84 million in federal assistance funds. The adjoining towns received an initial $50 million BRIC grant in 2022 and a total of $84 million in grants to date, representing a large percentage of the project’s estimated costs. According to local reporting, the levee project was projected to “remove about $1.2 million of flood insurance premiums from the community” and “protect 3,100 properties and 994 business,” said Willie Nunn, the regional FEMA director, all while laying the groundwork for capital investments and the construction of new affordable housing. The North Shore Levee Project is now stalled indefinitely.

In Massachusetts, a total of $90 million of approved BRIC grants on behalf of 18 communities, the Central Massachusetts Regional Planning Commission, and two state agencies have been revoked. This sweeping action will severely impact communities’ capacity to fund all manner of mitigation projects, from flood resilience to protect homes and businesses and safeguard water supplies, to about a half a dozen programs dedicated to building codes enhancements and training. In a statement from Chelsea city manager Fidel Maltez, “The loss of BRIC funding for the Island End River Flood Barrier project puts over $7 billion in annual economic activity—and the safety of more than 5,000 residents living in the floodplain—at risk.”

And in western North Carolina, which was ravaged by Hurricane Helene last fall, several ongoing recovery efforts will feel the sting of BRIC going away. The state as a whole is losing $184 million in grants, and as recently as April 15, FEMA rejected North Carolina’s request to extend recovery expenses with a 100% federal match for 180 days. Still, the representative for North Carolina’s 11th congressional district, Chuck Edwards, told the Carolina Journal that such a request was “unprecedented” and that his focus was more on making “a tangible difference” on the ground.

This outlook is not altogether unreasonable. Not everyone impacted by Helene has praise for the federal recovery effort, regardless of whether BRIC grants are attached.

Looking to grassroots efforts

James Artman is a combat veteran and small-business owner based in Nebo, N.C., about 40 miles east of Asheville. After Helene, he established the nonprofit Resilient Recovery NC to provide hands-on disaster recovery, one community and one neighbor at a time.

Over a recent phone call, Artman recalled the time when FEMA inspectors arrived in the wake of Helene. He observed what he calls “highly unqualified college kids” who were dispatched to investigate individual assistance claims and were ill-equipped to accurately characterize the damage. “FEMA operates basically like an insurance company, and it seems like their policy is to deny claims” or, at the most, grossly underestimate the costs of rebuilding things, he says. “Any kind of home projects, or private road or bridge projects, have not [received] money except for what has been provided by the larger nonprofits.”

Artman says that outside the few hundred million dollars that the Department of Transportation has spent on rebuilding state and interstate roads, very little of the $1.65 billion of federally approved block grants awarded to the state last January for recovery efforts has been spent thus far. The state’s own list of recovery milestones paints a slightly different picture, but it’s important to note which funds have been “offered” or “allocated” versus spent.

Instead, he says that through his own organization and a grassroots coalition of likeminded nonprofits, many of them also run by veterans, he wants to form something along the lines of “a privatized version of FEMA.” “With any [Emergency Operations Center] or emergency management department across the country, they’re overwhelmed … and there’s no mutual aid going on,” he says. In response to this apparent dearth of response, Artman purchased an excavator, skid steer, small dump truck, and equipment trailers, and his organization maintains 500,000 sq. ft. of warehouse and distribution space as a homebase for recovery efforts, which run the gamut from clearing debris and bio-remediation site work to repairing private roads and bridges and building new homes. All funding for these efforts comes from private donations from individuals, churches, local businesses, and even GoFundMe campaigns.

Currently, Artman is building a 1,500-sq. ft. Quonset hut for two sisters who lost their home during Helene. He cites his military background when discussing his work ethic, and why the kind of rapid mobilization needed to get out of this mess demands a military-style mindset. “We’re using the tools we already know how to use … There needs to be some sort of grassroots effort, because the top-down approach to disaster relief just doesn’t work.”

Concern over building codes

As recovery efforts continue in North Carolina, concerns linger over the state’s retrograde building codes and what role they may have played in preventing North Carolinians from receiving critical mitigation funding in the first place. Local reporting last year indicated that delays in adopting more progressive building codes—the state’s Building Code Council voted in 2014 to move to a six-year revision cycle in place of the customary three years—have put North Carolina behind most other coastal states, and thus “less competitive for federal funds,” according to Jordan Monaghan, a spokesman for former governor Roy Cooper.

Interestingly, the recently passed Disaster Recovery Act, signed into law by Governor Josh Stein last March, has “delayed the effective date of the [2024 North Carolina State Building Code] for at least one year,” according to an update issued by the state licensing board. In other words, the 2018 edition of the code that’s currently in place—and by most accounts should have been updated a few years ago—will remain so through at least next spring.

Until such time when this cat’s cradle of red tape can be reduced and federal dollars can be allocated and spent on good faith rebuilding and resiliency efforts, it seems like the Resilient Recovery NC model is the most reliable—which is to say, relying on the goodwill of neighbors and community organizations to do the heavy lifting.

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Justin R. Wolf is a Maine-based writer who covers green building trends and energy policy. His latest book, House Up on the Hill: The Revolutionary HMTX Headquarters, was just published by Ecotone.