Capital Corner
By Will Melofchik – NCOIL General Counsel
Welcome to the latest installment of Capital Corner, a column that aims to update you on some of the issues that NCOIL is following. Below are issues that NCOIL will be discussing at the upcoming NCOIL Spring Meeting and monitoring throughout 2021.
STORM Act Offers Needed and Sustainable Funding for Hazard Mitigation Projects
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), since 1980, the United States has sustained 265 weather and climate disaster events in which the events’ damages reached or exceeded $1 billion1. NOAA estimates that the total cost of those 265 events exceeded $1.775 trillion. Even more concerning is that analysis suggests these events are increasing; NOAA states that 2019 was the fifth consecutive year in which 10 or more billion-dollar weather and climate disaster events have impacted the U.S. From 2015 through 2019, the U.S. experienced a total of 69 separate billion-dollar events.
Today, there are multiple federal mitigation grant programs that help states and local communities rebuild after a disaster. However, pre-disaster hazard mitigation is an opportunity to increase resilience before disaster strikes. On January 1st, 2021 then President Donald Trump signed the “Safeguarding Tomorrow through Ongoing Risk Mitigation Act” (STORM Act) into law. The STORM Act, which received bipartisan support, authorizes the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to provide capitalization grants to states for hazard mitigation revolving loan funds to reduce risks from disasters and natural hazards. Specifically, these grants would allow states or tribal governments to offer low interest loans to local governments to pay for pre-disaster mitigation projects.
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