What The Hell America!

As floodwaters surged through the streets of Natchitoches last month, soaking homes and businesses in this rural Louisiana town, residents were left grappling with yet another devastating blow. Over a thousand residents lost power as the muddy waters left behind waterlogged homes and damaged possessions. It was the fifth major flooding event the small majority-Black city has seen in the past decade.

The community was hoping, however, that it wouldn’t have many more flood events to face. Last year, they were selected to receive support through a federal program that promised to fund critical infrastructure projects to mitigate weather disasters. 

Established in 2018 during the first Trump administration, the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, or BRIC, is the largest climate adaptation initiative the federal government has ever funded. Or rather, it was the nation’s largest climate adaptation program. 

According to an April 2 memo, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is canceling more than a billion dollars worth of BRIC grants that have not been paid out yet by the federal government, including a $120,000 grant that Natchitoches was going to use to improve its backup generator system. During severe storms, the new generator would power a system that pumps out floodwaters. 

“Any funding, especially for a smaller place, you want to win and keep it. I don’t have an unlimited pot of money,” said Ronnie Williams, who became Natchitoches’ first Black mayor in 2020. 

“We rely heavily on applying for federal grants and were successful under the Biden administration,” he added, noting that it would be nearly impossible to make infrastructure improvements without them. “It is concerning what Elon Musk and others are doing. It seems there won’t be much money available for non-wealthy places soon.”

The news of BRIC ending was first reported by Grist, an online climate magazine. 

“BRIC was yet another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program,” a FEMA spokesperson said after Grist reported the news. “It was more concerned with climate change than helping Americans [affected] by natural disasters.”

BRIC helped communities prepare for disasters before they happened, and it focused on helping the most vulnerable people face climate threats. 

Ending the program deepens America’s climate protection divide, with Black communities already bearing the heaviest burden. After disasters, the wealth of white homeowners actually increases because of federal aid, while Black residents lose $27,000 on average. By funding preemptive projects and focusing on rural and poorer communities, BRIC had the power to reverse some of this trend. With President Donald Trump’s recent threats to dismantle FEMA entirely, vulnerable places and low-income communities may lack the resources to rebuild from disasters. 

In a letter to the Trump administration sent the day after the memo was sent, Valerie Foushee, a Black congresswoman representing hurricane-stricken North Carolina wrote that “undermining the federal government’s disaster response capabilities [and] the decision to eliminate FEMA could ultimately cost American lives.”

Eliminating the agency and programs “will strand communities in crisis,” she added.

The decision to end the program came the same week that at least seven people were killed by tornadoes, and other parts of the country experienced a once-in-a-generation flooding event. The move adds to other federal actions, like removing climate adaptation tools documents from agency websites and redirecting funds previously earmarked for communities vulnerable to climate disasters.

Analyses show that communities with larger shares of minority residents were more likely to apply for BRIC funding, although applications from towns and cities in wealthier, more populated states were most likely to receive the funding. Under the Biden administration, BRIC was included in an initiative that outlined that at least 40% of all federal spending had to be in disadvantaged communities, meaning the program was becoming more likely to reach Black and low-income areas.  

It was for this reason — focusing on increasing equity in diverse communities — that the program was canceled. Trump has called for the ending of most Biden-era efforts that funneled more climate-related spending toward underrepresented groups — even though BRIC was actually created under Trump’s leadership. 

BRIC typically covered 75% of the cost associated with these projects and as much as 90% of the cost for projects in disadvantaged communities, like Natchitoches.

Studies show that by investing upfront costs in infrastructure, the government could save trillions of dollars by preventing damage from severe weather and climate threats like sea level rise. BRIC funding focused on large-scale infrastructure upgrades to nature-based solutions, each tailored to address specific vulnerabilities of communities facing threats from floods, hurricanes, wildfires, and earthquakes.

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These initiatives ranged from large-scale infrastructure upgrades to nature-based solutions, each tailored to address specific vulnerabilities of communities facing threats from floods, hurricanes, wildfires, and earthquakes.

Some projects included building floodwalls across the coasts to protect communities from rising waters, improving drainage systems and building natural rain-absorbent gardens in Black neighborhoods to reduce flooding in cities, burying power transmission lines to prevent outages during storms and lower the risk of starting wildfires in drought-stricken places, and restoring wetlands across Texas and Louisiana to absorb hurricane’s storm surges. 

Analyses show the projects have already saved lives and prevented property damage. 

For every dollar spent on mitigation through BRIC, FEMA estimated a savings of $6 in future disaster recovery costs. 

In Detroit’s Jefferson Chalmers neighborhood, which is 80% Black and where twice as many residents live in poverty as the national average, BRIC-funded sewage improvements now protect over 600 homes from flooding, significantly reducing the financial and emotional toll on residents.

The move may face legal challenges because it is unclear if Trump can cancel grants that are already approved with money appropriated by Congress.