Counties regroup after FEMA’s resiliency grant program resumes

Key Takeaways

As FEMA resumes and restructures its Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant program, counties are reassessing projects that were put in limbo during its cancellation and creating new hazard mitigation gameplans ahead of its upcoming funding cycle. 

In April 2025, the Trump Administration ended FEMA’s BRIC program, halting roughly 2,000 active infrastructure and disaster mitigation projects across the country. A coalition comprising 22 states and the District of Columbia sued FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security and the United States over the canceled grants. 

A federal judge ruled in favor of the states in December, mandating FEMA reinstate BRIC and restore over $3.6 billion in canceled funding. The federal agency officially resumed the grant program on March 25 in compliance with a court order. 

Prior to the program’s cancellation, Clatsop County, Ore. and Columbia Memorial Hospital were set to receive $14 million in BRIC funding to help build a tsunami evacuation zone in the rural hospital. Columbia Memorial Hospital sits along the Cascadia subduction zone; a massive rupture of the fault line would generate devastating tsunamis, and waves could reach up to 52 feet behind the hospital, according to Columbia Memorial Hospital resiliency planning.

The county and hospital had already begun spending down the funds when BRIC was canceled and construction of the project was forced to begin in early 2026, with the federal funds still in limbo, due to the short construction window available, according to Clatsop County Commissioner Mark Kujala. The county is waiting to hear back from FEMA regarding the funds that were allotted to the project, Kujala noted.

 “We decided to push forward with all the resiliency elements of the project,” Kujala wrote in a statement to County News. “We could no longer hold off on the construction timeline, and we had to stretch our reserves to fund the additional expenses, but the project is underway and on schedule.”

Roughly two dozen projects in Washington state totaling more than $150 million were put “in limbo” when BRIC was canceled, according to Washington Attorney General Nick Brown’s office. Brown co-led the multi-state coalition in filing the lawsuit against FEMA.

With shifting regulations and rising costs, localities are left to reassess the feasibility of completing the projects the way they were initially planned, said Luke Meyers, Pierce County, Wash. Emergency Management deputy director. 

BRIC’s reinstatement “is a great opportunity to get access back to the dollars, but now can you still complete the project based on those original scopes?” Meyers said. “I think that’s the real question with work that we’re working on in planning and public works with the state — do all those variables still hold, or have costs increased? Has the dynamic changed that would challenge the final outcome of those projects?”

Washington Emergency Management is working with the county and its other governmental partners to determine how projects that were put on pause when BRIC was canceled will be reconstituted, but logistics are still up in the air, according to Meyers. 

“Restarting those has been very slow, to be honest,” he said.

FEMA’s reinstatement of BRIC brings a new focus to the grant program of funding “shovel-ready” projects that are ready to implement, eliminating phased initiatives. Applications for fiscal year 2024-2025 BRIC grants are due July 23. Pierce County is prioritizing earthquake and flood risk mitigation projects, such as seismic retrofitting and updates to drainage systems, according to Meyers.

Eight months after FEMA canceled BRIC, a series of atmospheric river storms resulted in flooding and landslides in Pierce County and the largest dollar amount of public infrastructure damage in Washington state in more than four decades, according to Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson. 

The disaster underscored the necessity of federal assistance in pre-disaster hazard mitigation, Meyers said. Damage in the Pierce County city of Orting, which is located in the mid-Puyallup Watershed and would’ve traditionally faced much worse flooding, was limited because of work, including a setback levee, that was made possible through hazard mitigation grants, he noted. 

“I think it’s been a good reminder to take actions to reduce losses, and just the value of the federal mitigation grants,” Meyers said. “It just takes time, and so this flood — though we didn’t have as great of impacts — I think some of that future avoided loss was clearly documented with the flooding that we did see.”

BRIC enables jurisdictions of all sizes to participate in resiliency projects that otherwise wouldn’t have the resources to carry them out or helps complete them more quickly, Meyers noted. According to a 2019 National Institute of Building Sciences report, there’s a $6 return-on-investment for every $1 of public funding spent on up-front disaster mitigation.

“The value of that federal assistance is extremely important,” Meyers said. “And it does allow a lot of leveraging that we just don’t have that capacity [for] at the state or local level.”

BRIC funding has historically helped Pierce County “reduce its vulnerability and improve its resiliency,” and as the program continues to evolve, FEMA should entrust localities with more control over how the dollars are spent, according to Meyers.   

“The more flexible that these federal programs can be, more like a block grant, and have longer years of periods of performance, they’ll be more beneficial to the state and locals,” Meyers said. “At least here in Washington state.”