The city of St. Petersburg asked the federal government for almost $34 million to help fund local projects that would protect the city from natural disasters.
But now, it’s not going to get it.
The Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program is not the only initiative that grants Federal Emergency Management Agency funds to Florida, but it is one of the biggest.
BRIC has distributed $5 billion nationwide since 2020 for projects relating to storm-resistant infrastructure and floodplain restoration. It helps states and local governments reduce hazard risk, and it was the biggest climate initiative funded by the federal government to date.
However, the Trump administration ended BRIC this month, calling it a “wasteful, politicized grant program.”
What does this mean for Florida?
Florida will lose under $300 million previously accepted under BRIC for hurricane aid and flood mitigation efforts. Only 6% of the approved $293 million has been spent so far.
The greater Tampa Bay region is significantly impacted by this cut. The Carnegie Endowment reports the 14th U.S. Congressional District, which includes Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, has the highest number of households — 289,000 — who have applied for FEMA assistance since 2021.
St. Petersburg’s request for $33.82 million would have funded a lift station project that would channel storm and wastewater to treatment facilities. The grants were also intended for a backflow preventer and pump station project in Shore Acres, according to the St. Pete Catalyst.
“To cut a bunch of these programs that were intended to upgrade our infrastructure to prepare for all of this extreme weather, I think it’s a real setback,” said Ethan Frey, a visiting fellow at the Florida Policy Institute.
President Donald Trump was in his first term when BRIC was created in 2018. Since then, a mix of Republican- and Democratic-represented congressional districts have used these funds.
Any grants not yet been distributed will be returned to the Disaster Relief Fund or U.S. Treasury. BRIC projects that were awarded from 2020 to 2023 may continue project work until the end date identified in the contract, according to Florida’s Division of Emergency Management.
“The BRIC program was yet another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program,” a FEMA spokesperson said in a news release announcing the termination. “It was more concerned with political agendas than helping Americans affected by natural disasters.”
The nonprofit website Grist, which focuses on climate change, reported that the second sentence originally read that BRIC was “more concerned with climate change than helping Americans affected by natural disasters.”
Declining prioritization of climate change
The administration's decreasing focus on climate change and its effect on the severity of hurricanes and other weather-related disasters comes as the president looks at eliminating FEMA.
FEMA’s 2022-2026 Strategic Plan aimed to boost climate literacy to “improve disaster outcomes and long-term climate resilience through an increasingly shared understanding of climate risks and impactful mitigation opportunities.”
The BRIC program also aimed to “engage the agency’s state, local, tribal, territory, private sector and nonprofit partners in developing climate resilience through systems-based, community-wide investments in climate adaptation.”
The ending of BRIC – part of a larger effort at cutting federal disaster assistance – comes as hurricane season begins in less than six weeks.
Trump considers shutting down FEMA. DeSantis agrees
The Department of Homeland Security reportedly created a plan to dismantle critical disaster response, recovery and resilience operations at FEMA.
Trump signed an executive order in March to encourage state and local governments to “play a more active and significant role in national resilience” to prepare for disasters.
FEMA is currently managing over 1,000 incidents across every state and territory, including major disasters, federal emergencies and fire management incidents.
The Trump administration also removed the announcement of FEMA’s Flood Mitigation Assistance grant program from the organization’s website. That program planned to distribute $600 million nationally.
“I think these cuts, combined with what the administration is talking about doing to our current system for responding to emergency storms, is pretty threatening,” Frey said.
In February, FEMA’s staff was slashed by an estimated 1,000 employees. Officials say this could result in a slower disaster response and longer payout times.
A bill was introduced by U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Coral Springs, in March that would return FEMA to an independent agency instead of being part of the Department of Homeland Security.
“Dismantling FEMA will not make communities safer and will not increase access to disaster recovery resources,” CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, Renee Willis, said. “It will, however, risk the lives of the households most in need.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis reinforced Trump’s perspective to dismantle FEMA at the opening of the Florida State Fair in Tampa in February.
“The president was getting flack because of the media saying, ‘Oh, you know, he wants to dismantle FEMA and leave the states to fend for themselves,’ ” DeSantis said. “That’s not what the president is actually talking about doing. What he’s talking about doing makes a lot of sense. … 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.”
The governor’s budget for 2025-2026 includes a $344 million state match for costs relating to disasters.
“If President Trump wants to just block grant money to us and get FEMA out of it entirely, we would do even better because a lot of what we do is in spite of the FEMA bureaucracy, not because of the FEMA bureaucracy,” DeSantis said at the National Rental Home Council this month.
