FEMA funding cuts impact communities' ability to fix infrastructure before next major weather event

It's been a little longer than a week since Chantal sent our area into a state of emergency.

Six people were killed in a long, scary night of flooding from July 6 into the early morning hours of July 7.

The cleanup could take years to finish. It includes washed-out roads, property damage and water treatment plants shut down.

The Atlantic hurricane season started on June 1 and runs through November.

The Atlantic Coast is about 120 miles away from Orange County. It makes sense that a storm like Chantal came as a surprise to many people, but not to the Orange County and town of Hillsborough leaders in charge.

They've known flooding like this was possible, and they have millions of dollars from the Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA] to help prepare.

However, this past spring, the FEMA funding went away. Part of the letter the town of Hillsborough sent to FEMA in 2021 reads, “North Carolina is also expected to experience more frequent and severe riverine flooding events. The current RPS [river pump station], located within the floodway … is vulnerable to these changing pluvial and riverine flood conditions.” 

Hillsborough has had problems with its river pump station in the past.

During Chantal, the facility flooded. It sent 75% of the town's sewage spilling into the Eno River.

FEMA awarded Hillsborough $5.81 million to move the pump station out of a flood hazard area.

The money came from the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities [BRIC] grant program.

In April, the Trump administration canceled that program, calling it “wasteful and ineffective.”

The move pulled the funding for Hillsborough and more than a dozen other North Carolina communities that were counting on the funding.

“The impact of Tropical Storm Chantal on the River Pump Station is exactly the type of scenario that BRIC grants were intended to protect the public against,” said Hillsborough Mayor Mark Bell.

Hillsborough’s river pump station is just the beginning. Orange County estimates damage from Chantal will cost more than $30 million. Preliminary figures from Orange County officials estimate $9.1 million in damages to 123 residential properties, and public damages totaling $22.6 million.

It raises the questions: Where will the county get the money for this? Also, how are they going to pay for the upgrades to mitigate future flooding issues?

WRAL News spoke with Orange County’s Emergency Services Director Kirby Saunders about the questions, asking whether the county has a rainy-day fund to cover the costs.

“Certainly not,” Saunders said. “Most local governments and individuals alike, some are fortunate to have rainy-day funds.

“[For] most local government administrations, we operate under the thinnest of margins. There are definitely not reserve funds immediately available. All of our funding comes from taxpayers. We always look at this in the perspective of the second disaster. There is the physical first disaster of the storm itself and the impacts it’s caused to our residents, and the second disaster could potentially be to pay for those public damage costs. And we want to avoid that if at all possible, especially another hit to taxpayers. So, this is a situation where we have to be really creative, we have to be collaborative amongst local governments, and we have to open the doors to all possible avenues of potential outside assistance.”

Related: 'Oh, it's bad': Orange County woman recounts terrifying escape from Chantal floodwaters

WRAL News also asked Saunders about what Orange County needs to do to get its infrastructure in place to withstand storms that seem to be growing in frequency and intensity, given the recent history of Chantal, Helene in September 2024 and last week’s storms in Texas. 

“That’s a really great question, and unfortunately, I don’t have all the answers for that,” Saunders said. “I will say we do have a hazard mitigation plan that outlines the strategies that we know we need to take and have endorsed taking.

“I think what is unknown a lot right now is [that] a lot of those actions are, by and large, dependent on outside sources of funds. Not many local governments have programs and the capabilities to fund, say, acquisition projects on their own, where we are acquiring flood-prone properties [and] residential structures. A lot of that is dependent on [and] reliant on state funding as well as FEMA funding to support those projects.”

Saunders said Orange County doesn’t know how it will pay for the repairs and where its next funding will come from to pay for upgrades to mitigate future flooding risks.

The North Carolina Emergency Management does have an open application period for hazard mitigation projects, and Saunders said the county will continue to try getting funding from that.

What has been made abundantly clear, though, is that without help from the state and federal government, critical infrastructure upgrades for local communities can sit idle. Hillsborough leaders say the loss of FEMA funding for that pumping station relocation set them back at least six to eight months.

Plus, Hillsborough is one municipality. Like Saunders, state and federal lawmakers need to be thinking about the second disaster, its public damage costs and what more can be done to help these cash-strapped communities.

Many local leaders don’t know how they’re going to pay for the repairs, and they don't know how they're going to pay for upgrades to mitigate future flood risks.

Another option is North Carolina Emergency Management. The state agency has an open application period for hazard mitigation projects.

Saunders said Orange County will continue trying that option, among others.