FEMA slashes $300 million in flooding, hurricane relief projects in Florida

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Nearly $300 million in federal aid meant to help protect Florida communities from flooding, hurricanes and other natural disasters has been frozen since President Donald Trump took office in January.

Now the state will never get the money, leaving dozens of projects in limbo, from a plan to raise roads in St. Augustine to a $150 million effort to strengthen canals in South Florida.

Calling it a “wasteful, politicized grant program,” Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Cameron Hamilton last week ended the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC, program.

BRIC is only a portion — but a significant one — of all FEMA funds received by Florida. The cancellation of the program comes as the Trump administration says it may scrap FEMA altogether and give funds directly to the states to deal with disaster response as they see fit.

Hamilton canceled all BRIC grants from 2020 to 2023, so any approved but not-yet-used money cannot be spent and must be returned to the federal government.

Florida will lose $293 million of the $312 million Congress okayed for hurricane relief and flood mitigation efforts. It had so far spent only $19 million, or 6%, of its BRIC grants.

“It is outrageous and dangerous to rescind congressionally appropriated funding intended for flood mitigation and municipal storm preparedness—especially in a state as vulnerable to climate disasters as Florida,” said Sadaf Knight, CEO of the nonpartisan Florida Policy Institute.

Florida has been hit with increasingly stronger storms at a higher frequency than in the past, faces rising sea levels, and needs to repair aging storm water management systems, she said.

“Stripping away these critical resources puts lives, property, and public safety at unnecessary risk,” Knight said. “Florida’s members of Congress owe the public a commitment to restoring and protecting this vital funding.”

The BRIC program began during Trump’s first term in office in 2020 and has provided $5 billion to states and local communities. But now FEMA officials say that during the Biden administration the program became “more concerned with political agendas than helping Americans affected by natural disasters.”

Trump froze all FEMA funds, including BRIC grants, when he took office in January. Nearly two dozen Democrat-led states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration over the freeze. They said it unfairly targeted blue states whose policies didn’t align with his own views on immigration, climate change, DEI and other so-called “woke” ideologies.

Florida did not join that lawsuit, and Gov. Ron DeSantis has said he supports Trump’s efforts to reorganize FEMA.

“Cut the bureaucracy of FEMA out entirely and that money will go further than it currently does at greater amounts going through FEMA’s bureaucracy,” DeSantis said at a press conference in February.

Last year, Florida received over $1 billion in FEMA aid after Hurricanes Helene and Milton struck the state. FEMA has stepped in 21 times in the last 14 years and given Florida $8.5 billion in disaster relief assistance.

The governor’s office and state emergency management division did not respond to requests for comments about the canceled BRIC grants.

The states that sued had initial success when U.S. District Judge John McConnell of Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration to lift its FEMA freeze, calling it a “covert” effort to punish states whose immigration practices differed from the White House. But several days later, he granted Trump a reprieve after a Supreme Court ruling in another case seemed to vindicate its actions.

Now FEMA has canceled the BRIC grants that Florida was going to use to elevate flood-prone roads in Jacksonville, build a hurricane community safe room for first responders in Key West, and undertake flood mitigation work on canals in north Miami-Dade and south Broward counties.

The agency most impacted by the termination of BRIC is the South Florida Water Management District, responsible for maintaining water quality, controlling the water supply, ecosystem restoration and flood control in a 16-county area that runs from Orlando south to the Keys.

The district received only $6 million of its $150 million grant before the program was canceled. The money was intended to help build three structures on canals and basins in North Miami-Dade and Broward counties to improve flood mitigation.

Design work “for a couple of the pump stations” is underway and will continue, said Drew Bartlett, the district’s executive director, at a Thursday governing board meeting. “We are still doing that while we evaluate the ultimate impacts to those projects.”

The Florida Division of Emergency Management must return $36.9 million in BRIC money that had been earmarked for management costs and technical assistance.

Jacksonville will lose $24.9 million targeted to raise roads and make improvements to a water reclamation facility.

Key West is out $11.25 million for its planned community safe room, and Pasco County will lose $5.56 million for 18 road improvement projects, among other cuts to communities across the state.

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