DENTON, Texas – On Monday, August 28, FEMA announced the selections for nearly $3 billion in climate resilience funding through two competitive grant programs to help communities across the nation enhance climate and disaster resiliency.

In FEMA Region 6, this includes 9 BRIC national competition selections for $120.5 million and 68 community-wide selections for $333.1 million in Flood Mitigation Assistance. These projects have met the basic eligibility requirements and will enter the next phase of the awards review process.

The nationwide funding includes $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. 

The top five primary hazard sources of the projects selected in the national competition include flooding, infrastructure failure, fire, drought, and dam or levee break hazards. 

Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities

For the first time, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas were selected for BRIC awards for a combined total of $120.5 million in BRIC national competition selections. 

• Arkansas: $2,511,537 (1 project)
• Louisiana: $50,872,254 (2 projects)
• Texas: $67,129,048 (6 projects)

These are large mitigation projects and activities—six of which use nature-based solutions—to reduce natural hazard risks for states, local communities, tribes and territories. Nature-based solutions are sustainable planning, design, environmental management and engineering practices that weave natural features or processes into the built environment to promote adaptation and resilience.

The Danville School District in Arkansas plans to construct a safe room at their Elementary School Campus. The safe room will accommodate more than 1,100 faculty, staff and students. Currently the Danville School District has no protection for their students and staff during severe wind and tornado events and this project, constructed to meet the new State-wide Building Codes, will protect and save lives.

Another example is the construction of a regional stormwater detention facility for Edinburgh, Texas, located in Hidalgo County. Edinburgh experiences frequent flooding due to its flat terrain, low soil infiltration capacities, and intense rain events.  

Hidalgo County plans to excavate land, create a detention pond, widen existing drainage ditches, and install concrete pipes to provide 50-year flood protection. Through this nature-based solution, the proposed South Lateral Regional Detention Facility will reduce the depth of flooding and safeguard more than 5,700 residents that live in the county. 

Learn more about these and additional projects at the BRIC webpage. 

Flood Mitigation Assistance

Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas received Flood Mitigation Assistance selections for a total of $333.1 million. 

• Louisiana: $141,635,374 (45 projects)
• Oklahoma: $1,171,926 (1 project)
• Texas: $190,291,883 (22 projects)

This funding will go towards community-wide elevation, acquisitions and mitigation reconstruction of repetitively flood-damaged buildings insured by the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP).

In Louisiana, East Baton Rouge Parish plans to elevate 84 properties and demolish seven others to create green space and prevent future damage. 

In Oklahoma, Tulsa County plans to acquire and demolish four single-family residential structures in the floodplain that have flooded numerous times over the years. This is part of a comprehensive floodplain buyout program Tulsa is implementing to buy and demolish homes in Special Flood Hazard Areas. 

Learn more about these and additional projects at the Flood Mitigation Assistance webpage.  

Additional Information about the Funding

These are the final selections for this grant cycle bringing the total to nearly $3 billion. In May, FEMA announced $160 million in smaller-scale selections to support mitigation projects and planning, project scoping and the adoption and enforcement of hazard resistant building codes.

President Biden has continued to provide additional funding to FEMA’s annual resilience grant programs, increasing them from $700 million to $1.16 billion during his first year in office to nearly tripling it in the 2022 funding cycle, $900 million of which came from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The increased amount allows FEMA to diversify its geographic scope in funding selections and get more federal funds to communities needing it the most to become safer from the effects of climate change.

The law provides FEMA nearly $7 billion to invest in communitywide mitigation to proactively reduce their vulnerability to flood, hurricanes, drought, wildfires, extreme heat and other hazards.