Cities and counties in Kentucky received an official notice last week that the federal government was cancelling millions of dollars in infrastructure grants. The email hit the inboxes of local officials as they were still picking up the pieces from a once-in-a-decade flood that devastated the central and western parts of the state.
The grants cancelled by President Donald Trump’s administration would have funded flood mitigation projects in Louisville. Projects in seven other counties, plus some overseen by Kentucky Emergency Management, also lost funding. The cuts to the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grant program, or BRIC, total $9.3 million in Kentucky.
Wes Sydnor, the spokesperson for the Metropolitan Sewer District in Louisville, said their two projects impacted by the cuts — improvements at the West Woods Creek Basin and the Western Flood Pump Station — are critical to alleviating future flooding.
“We’re on the tail end of a Top 10 flood event in Louisville and these are the types of projects that help make that system that protects the city more robust,” he said.
Sydnor said these two projects have to move forward with or without the assistance of the federal government. But he said federal funding like the BRIC program would help MSD upgrade its 70-year-old flood infrastructure without increasing fees on ratepayers.
Infrastructure labeled 'political'
The Federal Emergency Management Agency under Trump first announced its plans to gut the BRIC program April 4.
In a press release, FEMA officials called the program “wasteful” and “politicized,” and pitched the grant cancellations as a return to the agency's core mission of responding to natural disasters.
“The BRIC program was yet another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program,” agency officials said. “It was more concerned with political agendas than helping Americans affected by natural disasters.”
The reality, however, is that the BRIC program was helping communities across the U.S. better prepare for future disasters.
The largest grant in Kentucky was awarded to Falmouth, a city that sits along the Licking River in Pendleton County. Falmouth was set to receive $6.7 million to rebuild a 5.1-mile stretch of deteriorating radial transmission lines.
Those are the primary power source for 2,200 residents and their diminished condition made them vulnerable to wind and storm damage.
In a statement earlier this month, Chad Berginnis, executive director of the national Association of State Floodplain Managers, called the Trump administration's move to dismantle the BRIC program “beyond reckless.”
“At this very moment, when states like Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee are grappling with major flooding, the administration’s decision to walk away from BRIC is hard to understand,” Berginnis said. “For years, Congress has provided communities a clear and consistent commitment to resilience, only to now be told by the federal government that you are on your own.”
Berginnis pointed to a 2020 study that found that mitigating flood hazards before a natural disaster strikes saves up to $13 for every $1 invested.
FEMA officials say approximately $882 million of the $1 billion previously directed to the BRIC grant program will be returned to the U.S. Treasury to be reallocated by Congress.
In addition to the $9.3 million cut to projects in Kentucky that were already awarded grant funding, the Trump administration has also tossed out applications from cities and counties in the Commonwealth worth $23 million.
Reducing flood risk in Louisville
In Louisville, the cuts to BRIC funding hit projects that help protect thousands of residents against flooding.
MSD had been awarded $350,000 to start analyzing how best to expand or upgrade the Wet Woods Creek Basin in south-central Jefferson County.
The basin helps protect 46,000 residents that live in that watershed, including 55 homes that have experienced repeated flood losses. Those homes had damages in 2006, 2009, 2013, 2015 and 2018, according to MSD.
“Over the last 20 years, there’s almost a billion gallons of stormwater storage that has been built in this watershed,” Sydnor said. “This [funding] would allow us to do additional planning, additional modeling to reduce that risk even more for homes and for folks who are in that watershed.”
Louisville will also lose out on another $400,000 awarded to MSD for one of its oldest pump stations.
The Western Flood Pump Station was constructed in 1957 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It’s also one of Louisville’s largest flood pump stations and was activated during the recent flooding. The funding would have allowed MSD to analyze potential capacity upgrades to the aging facility.
Sydnor said these needed investments will now be delayed because of the federal funding cuts.
“We’ll either find alternative means to pay for it or, if it’s coming out of our capital budget, we’ll have to plan and budget for that,” Sydnor said. “It might not happen as quickly as we would like for it to happen, but these are critical projects that have to get done.”
He said it’s not clear at the moment how many months, or years, it will be these projects will get off the ground now.
