End of FEMA program affects drinking water, building code updates, tornado shelter in SD

A footbridge spans Spring Creek in South Dakota's Black Hills. Hill City had hoped to use Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities funding for a floodplain study of the creek. (Seth Tupper/South Dakota Searchlight)

Drinking water upgrades for Mobridge, efficiency boosting software systems for Rapid City and a tornado shelter for Chancellor are among the South Dakota projects that now count as formerly funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

FEMA announced the axing of its Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant program last month in a press release lambasting the Biden-era creation as “wasteful” and “politicized.”

The 2021 program aimed to direct $1 billion in funding toward infrastructure projects to help communities across the U.S. “reduce their hazard risk” as they “build capability and capacity.”

The press release from the Trump administration’s incarnation of FEMA says all awards from 2020 through 2024 are rescinded, and that all the money that hasn’t been distributed won’t be. The unspent $882 million will flow into the U.S. Treasury or be reallocated by Congress, the release says.

FEMA falls under the leadership of Homeland Security Secretary and former South Dakota governor Kristi Noem.

The program “was more concerned with political agendas than helping Americans affected by natural disasters,” the FEMA release says. “Under Secretary Noem’s leadership, we are committed to ensuring that Americans in crisis can get the help and resources they need.”

The South Dakota Democratic Party issued a press release of its own on the cessation of the grant program, one trashing Noem’s agency and Trump’s policies as damaging to South Dakota communities.

“Because of these cuts, city and county leaders will now have to scramble to either figure out where the rest of the money will come from, or ditch their projects altogether, leaving their communities vulnerable to disasters” wrote Shane Merrill, chair of the state party.

According to a tally of federal cuts compiled and updated weekly by the administration of Noem’s successor, Gov. Larry Rhoden, $8.9 million in South Dakota projects were set to benefit from BRIC grants. Based on South Dakota Searchlight calls to local governments involved in the projects, it’s unclear if that total figure represents the amount of grant money lost, or the total project costs including other funding sources.

Mobridge water treatment

Some BRIC money was collected and spent before the shuttering of the program. The city of Mobridge got $311,000 for phase one of a three-phase project to replace the piping that delivers Missouri River water from Lake Oahe to the city’s water treatment plant on its way to residents’ taps.

That first round of BRIC money paid for engineering, planning and a dive team survey, all undertaken in preparation of the second round of BRIC funding, which Mobridge Finance Officer Heather Beck said would’ve set the physical piping upgrade portion of the project in motion.

“We had been told by the FEMA folks that if phase one is awarded, they had never seen the second phase not get awarded,” Beck said.

The anticipated grant assistance with the pipe rebuild was a boon to Mobridge’s larger $11.2 million drinking water project. Water bills paid by the north-central South Dakota community’s residents are enough to keep the city “self-sustaining” for the most part, Beck said, but the cost of major upgrades can be a heavy one to spread around.

“With only 3,200 people, it takes more from them to be able to pay for these projects,” Beck said.

The city’s on the lookout for more state or federal funding sources now, Beck said. The city had taken in some grant funding from the American Rescue Plan Act for the wider water treatment project already, but “a lot of that $11.2 million has had to be borrowed.”

City leadership has reached out to South Dakota’s congressional delegation in hopes that some of the grant funding can be restored through a program that’s not shuttered.

Mobridge’s nearly $4 million BRIC-funded project, with grant funding passed through to the city by Walworth County, was the largest project on the $8.9 million list of grant-supported projects in South Dakota. The city was set to pay 20% of the cost, meaning it lost out on about $3.2 million.

Rapid City building codes, tornado shelters

The project with the second-highest price tag on the state’s tally of lost grant funding was $2.6 million. That project was meant to help Rapid City cover the labor costs of updating its fire codes, pay for software that would allow citizens or companies to submit documents like building permits or developer plans online, and to upgrade its computing systems to connect departments and avoid duplicate work between departments managing development and permitting.

A letter from Mayor Jason Salamun to the U.S. Senate majority leader, South Dakota Republican John Thune, says the work aligns “with the priorities of the Trump-Vance administration.”

“Our project was specifically designed to enhance operational efficiency within our local government, ultimately saving taxpayer dollars and reducing administrative burdens for both city staff and the general public, including housing developers,” the letter reads.

Rapid City’s share of the project was $623,093; the BRIC program was set to cover a little under a million dollars.

The city also hoped to create an inventory of potentially hazardous buildings, although Grants Division Manager Jamie Toennies said decisions on what the city might do to address those buildings would come later.

“Opportunities are there to proactively keep the buildings from getting in worse shape,” she said.

The city is on the lookout for more funding sources, Toennies said, as “we had identified this need before this grant.”

The third-largest South Dakota project was $485,973 for the town of Chancellor, home to 316 people and one large ethanol production plant. According to a map of FEMA-funded mitigation projects maintained by the state, the town was in line for BRIC support of a severe wind and tornado shelter.

Hill City, a city of around 1,000 in Pennington County, had asked for, but wasn’t awarded, money for a floodplain study of Spring Creek, which runs through town. Finance Officer Stacia Tallon said the federal share of the $167,200 project would have helped the city determine where to put replacement box culverts to mitigate flood risk, and to map out areas that might be safe for building.

The box culvert piece of the project in particular is still necessary, Tallon said, although it’s unclear when or how the city will be able to move forward with the plans.

“We’re still looking at them, but they’ve been kind of put on the back burner,” Tallon said.

End of FEMA program affects drinking water, building code updates, tornado shelter in SD

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