Research shows climate change intensified Hurricane Katrina, and 20 years later, scientists say hurricanes are growing even stronger due to climate change.
Five years ago, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) started the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program to fund projects that help prevent storm damage from disasters, before disasters happen. Louisiana was set to receive more than $720 million.
Then the Trump administration cancelled the program.
The Coastal Desk’s Eva Tesfaye reports on what that means as New Orleans prepares for future storms.
This story has been edited for length and clarity.
EVA TESFAYE: On the day I visit the Vietnamese community in Lower Algiers, known as Hung Dao, it’s raining, which is fitting because I’m here to learn about the community’s struggles with flooding. The neighborhood is suburban, with cute houses and nice gardens. But there’s also a lot of abandoned infrastructure like buildings, gas stations, bridges.
JOHN HOA NGUYEN: Junk, trash and you know, abandoned houses.
TESFAYE: That’s John Hoa Nguyen. He’s one of the board members of the Hung Dao Community Development Corporation. It’s a nonprofit in the neighborhood trying to improve recreation and access to culture. He says whenever it rains heavily for more than 30 minutes, he starts to see flooding. The problem is made worse by houses sinking due to subsidence.
NGUYEN: Every time we have heavy rain, you can see the water go up to almost to the curb of the street.
TESFAYE: That’s why the community wants to transform ten acres of deserted land into a cultural heritage garden that can also retain stormwater.
The land used to hold low-income housing that was damaged by Katrina. Now, it’s an overgrown lot protected by a metal fence.
Tap Bui is with another nonprofit partnering on the project, Song Community Development Corporation.
TAP BUI: We have a lot of overgrown and invasive species of like, trees, shrubs, plants. After they demolished the apartments they did leave the foundation.
So there's some foundation slabs here. It's currently gated because there was some illegal dumping and it still continues to be illegal dumping on site. As you can see with some like sofas and trash that we have here.
TESFAYE: Hung Dao and Song partnered with the city. Together, they asked for more than $1 million from FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities Program — or BRIC, for short.
The money would fund a study for how to turn this blighted landscape into an asset that reduces flooding: Think traditional gardens, a pond, but also: a playground.
It’s exactly why BRIC was created – to fund this kind of hazard preparedness, to make disasters less damaging when they hit.
BUI: Why don't we transform this 10 acres into, you know, a stormwater park or something around hazard mitigation, but also honoring cultural preservation and identity?
TESFAYE: Almost a year ago, they found out they got the funding.
But then a few months later, the Trump administration cancelled the program. They called it wasteful and said BRIC was more concerned with political agendas than helping people affected by natural disasters.
The Governor's Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP) says FEMA hasn’t yet specified which projects will lose funding.
Here in New Orleans, Austin Feldbaum from the city’s Hazard Mitigation Office says the city already started working on some of these projects.
AUSTIN FELDBAUM: Our stance right now is to keep moving, knowing that ultimately the city might be on the hook for, for the cost of the study.
TESFAYE: Feldbaum says he was excited when BRIC first rolled out, which was actually under the previous Trump administration.
Like other FEMA programs, he says it was still slow, bureaucratic and clunky, but it made it easier to fund projects like Hung Dao Gardens.
He says it boosted the money they could spend, encouraged community involvement and justified projects with multiple benefits, not just hazard mitigation.
FELDBAUM: It was important because it was proactive and forward-looking. Being a pre-disaster mitigation program means you're not waiting around for something bad to happen before you fix a known problem. And I mean, that's where we need to be getting,
TESFAYE: Alessandra Jerolleman, is the Director of Research at Loyola’s Center on Environment, Land, and Law. She studies hazard mitigation and climate adaptation. She says it’s not just BRIC being cancelled that worries her.
ALESSANDRA JEROLLEMAN: Our expectations about federal assistance are kind of up in the air.
TESFAYE: Losing grants from the Inflation Reduction Act will also impact the city’s efforts to prepare for climate change, she says. And FEMA itself is at risk.
JEROLLEMAN: And there's a lot of discussion and debate right now about whether or not, we will or won't have a FEMA, whether or not we should or shouldn't have a FEMA, right?
TESFAYE: Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy — who has been wary of criticizing the Trump administration — has said BRIC and other FEMA programs are vital for Louisiana. He spoke about it on the Senate floor in April.
CASSIDY: Preventing homes from flooding that if they do flood, will cost the federal taxpayer billions of dollars. That's not waste. That's good planning.
TESFAYE: But the Trump administration has called on states and local governments to find their own funding for disasters.
It denied disaster aid for tornadoes in Arkansas, flooding in West Virginia and a windstorm in Washington state.
Loyola professor Jerolleman says local governments are already on the hook for so much of the impact of increasing extreme weather, like flooding.
JEROLLEMAN: The climate is changing. We're going to see more events that we don't expect.
TESFAYE: Jerolleman says the federal government still has a major responsibility to help protect its citizens.
JEROLLEMAN: This nation needs a New Orleans, it needs a city at the base of the Mississippi River, and, and we're all in this together, so having. Federal mitigation funds, being able to support the places that are most at risk is really, really valuable.
TESFAYE: The Water Collaborative is one New Orleans nonprofit that is trying to set up a new way for the city to fund its own hazard mitigation efforts: a stormwater fee.
Stormwater services are mostly run by the New Orleans Sewage and Water Board and funded by property taxes. But certain properties don’t pay property taxes — including churches, universities or the Superdome. A fee would be a way to get them to contribute to maintaining the city’s drainage system. Jessica Dandridge-Smith is the executive director of the Water Collaborative.
JESSICA DANDRIDGE-SMITH: We have to make our own money some kind of way, and a fee is a reliable source.
TESFAYE: The group has done numerous studies and surveys on how to implement the fee equitably and hopes to put it on the ballot in local New Orleans elections this fall. The money would go towards making up the New Orleans’ Sewerage and Water Board’s deficit, but some of it would also go towards green infrastructure and community resilience projects.
But BRIC funded projects throughout the entire state, for a total of $721 million dollars. There was money for the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana to improve evacuation routes and for Ascension Parish to strengthen electrical infrastructure.
Dandridge says by not investing in those kinds of projects, the federal government is basically forcing residents to leave Louisiana.
DANDRIDGE-SMITH: Whether it be Orleans Parish, whether it be Acadiana parish, whether it be, you know, Slidell or Plaquemines Parish. Nowhere in Louisiana will be a safe place to live.
TESFAYE: Back in Algiers, Nguyen says he’s hoping that the Hung Dao garden project makes the neighborhood both safer and more pleasant. He wants to stop young Vietnamese Americans from moving away.
NGUYEN: So this is not a desirable location for young people to stay. So in order for us to regain our population, we had to do something else better.
To sustain their community, he says they need all the help they can get, and that includes local, state and federal governments.
In New Orleans, I’m Eva Tesfaye.
The Water Collaborative of Greater New Orleans provides underwriting support for WWNO and WRKF, but our reporting remains independent and we cover them like any other newsmaker or business.
