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The Federal Emergency Management Agency is not going to cease operations. But it might need to make some difficult calls.
As communities across the United States continue to be overwhelmed by extreme weather, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief fund — the largest source of federal post-disaster assistance — is likely heading into the red.
“Right now, we anticipate a shortfall towards the mid and end of August,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said at a congressional hearing earlier this month.
To address the most pressing question right off the bat: No, this doesn’t mean FEMA is going to cease operations any day now or be unavailable to assist places impacted by disasters in the weeks to come. But it is worth understanding how FEMA got here and the sort of difficult calls the agency might need to make if its prediction comes to pass.
Taking it back to the basics, FEMA defines the disaster relief fund as “an appropriation against which FEMA can direct, coordinate, manage, and fund eligible response and recovery efforts” for federally-declared disasters and emergencies. These dollars can be put toward works like removing debris after a disaster and repairing public infrastructure, as well as preparing for future disasters and giving impacted residents financial aid. That means the funding both makes things happen quickly after disaster strikes and is a source of ongoing assistance in the months or even years that follow. When making a request for next year’s budget, Criswell described the disaster relief fund as a “vital function to our nation’s readiness posture.”
The fund is typically filled through congressionally-approved appropriations, including supplemental appropriations in response to specific disasters. In line with other disaster spending, these costs have spiked in recent years in response to increasingly extreme weather events and the Covid-19 pandemic. According to a Congressional Budget Office analysis released last year, disaster relief fund spending was around $5 billion annually between 1992-2004; from 2005-2021, the annual average was more than triple that at $16.5 billion.
Administrator Criswell has been warning Congress about a potential summer deficit since April, and this forecasted dip has also been clear in monthly reports FEMA shares with Congress tracking the fund’s balance. In fact, a group of Florida congress members described the fund as “one of the most-tracked single accounts funded by Congress each year” in a recent letter calling for Congress to take action on the issue. Despite that bipartisan plea and legislation in both the House of Representatives and the Senate to refill the fund, Congress failed to pass any supplemental aid before adjourning for an August recess. When sessions resume in September, refilling the fund will be one of a long list of financial priorities before the end of the month, which is also the end of the fiscal year.
Per FEMA’s July report to Congress, the fund is expected to hit a $4.2 million deficit in September. But in an email yesterday, a FEMA spokesperson told me funding levels are “more than adequate to execute immediate response and recovery efforts to any incidents which may occur” and that FEMA is “working closely with the administration to ensure adequate resources remain available.” The agency declined to offer any specifics about what that work entails or how funds might be moved around to address any areas of need. So far, the Biden administration has not yet requested any supplemental funding from Congress.
When addressing questions about the potential shortfall in the July hearing, Administrator Criswell said FEMA has a number of “tools that we can implement” to ensure the agency continues to offer aid if and when disasters occur in coming weeks. She also clarified that the status of the fund’s balance does not factor into whether aid applications to the agency will be granted or denied.
Jessie Riposo, director of the RAND Corporation’s Disaster Management and Resilience Program, told me that addressing any lack in the disaster relief fund would ultimately come down to the agency needing to make risk calculations and determine where dollars are most necessary until funding as usual resumes.
Craig Fugate, who served as FEMA Administrator during the Obama administration, explained to Marketplace that addressing any new disasters would likely come at the temporary expense of longer-term priorities, such as rebuilding or mitigation programs. (There’s an unfortunate irony in there, as a National Institute of Building Sciences study found each dollar spent on federal mitigation grants saves an average of $6 in post-disaster recovery spending.)
For now, Riposo notes that the disaster relief fund is still operating as usual and whether or not there will be shortfalls are speculation. The difficulty in predicting disaster-related costs is something Criswell has addressed, as well, telling Congress, “The disaster relief fund as we continue to go into the last quarter is always a very dynamic situation and the balances continue to change.”
However, the draw on this resource is showing no signs of easing up: In July alone, there were seven federally-declared disasters added to the agency’s growing list of responsibilities.
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Did a battery plant disaster in California spark a PR crisis on the East Coast?
Battery fire fears are fomenting a storage backlash in New York City – and it risks turning into fresh PR hell for the industry.
Aggrieved neighbors, anti-BESS activists, and Republican politicians are galvanizing more opposition to battery storage in pockets of the five boroughs where development is actually happening, capturing rapt attention from other residents as well as members of the media. In Staten Island, a petition against a NineDot Energy battery project has received more than 1,300 signatures in a little over two months. Two weeks ago, advocates – backed by representatives of local politicians including Rep. Nicole Mallitokis – swarmed a public meeting on the project, getting a local community board to vote unanimously against the project.
According to Heatmap Pro’s proprietary modeling of local opinion around battery storage, there are likely twice as many strong opponents than strong supporters in the area:
Heatmap Pro
Yesterday, leaders in the Queens community of Hempstead enacted a year-long ban on BESS for at least a year after GOP Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, other local politicians, and a slew of aggrieved residents testified in favor of a moratorium. The day before, officials in the Long Island town of Southampton said at a public meeting they were ready to extend their battery storage ban until they enshrined a more restrictive development code – even as many energy companies testified against doing so, including NineDot and solar plus storage developer Key Capture Energy. Yonkers also recently extended its own battery moratorium.
This flurry of activity follows the Moss Landing battery plant fire in California, a rather exceptional event caused by tech that was extremely old and a battery chemistry that is no longer popular in the sector. But opponents of battery storage don’t care – they’re telling their friends to stop the community from becoming the next Moss Landing. The longer this goes on without a fulsome, strident response from the industry, the more communities may rally against them. Making matters even worse, as I explained in The Fight earlier this year, we’re seeing battery fire concerns impact solar projects too.
“This is a huge problem for solar. If [fires] start regularly happening, communities are going to say hey, you can’t put that there,” Derek Chase, CEO of battery fire smoke detection tech company OnSight Technologies, told me at Intersolar this week. “It’s going to be really detrimental.”
I’ve long worried New York City in particular may be a powder keg for the battery storage sector given its omnipresence as a popular media environment. If it happens in New York, the rest of the world learns about it.
I feel like the power of the New York media environment is not lost on Staten Island borough president Vito Fossella, a de facto leader of the anti-BESS movement in the boroughs. Last fall I interviewed Fossella, whose rhetorical strategy often leans on painting Staten Island as an overburdened community. (At least 13 battery storage projects have been in the works in Staten Island according to recent reporting. Fossella claims that is far more than any amount proposed elsewhere in the city.) He often points to battery blazes that happen elsewhere in the country, as well as fears about lithium-ion scooters that have caught fire. His goal is to enact very large setback distance requirements for battery storage, at a minimum.
“You can still put them throughout the city but you can’t put them next to people’s homes – what happens if one of these goes on fire next to a gas station,” he told me at the time, chalking the wider city government’s reluctance to capitulate on batteries to a “political problem.”
Well, I’m going to hold my breath for the real political problem in waiting – the inevitable backlash that happens when Mallitokis, D’Esposito, and others take this fight to Congress and the national stage. I bet that’s probably why American Clean Power just sent me a notice for a press briefing on battery safety next week …
And more of the week’s top conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Queen Anne’s County, Maryland – They really don’t want you to sign a solar lease out in the rural parts of this otherwise very pro-renewables state.
2. Logan County, Ohio – Staff for the Ohio Power Siting Board have recommended it reject Open Road Renewables’ Grange Solar agrivoltaics project.
3. Bandera County, Texas – On a slightly brighter note for solar, it appears that Pine Gate Renewables’ Rio Lago solar project might just be safe from county restrictions.
Here’s what else we’re watching…
In Illinois, Armoracia Solar is struggling to get necessary permits from Madison County.
In Kentucky, the mayor of Lexington is getting into a public spat with East Kentucky Power Cooperative over solar.
In Michigan, Livingston County is now backing the legal challenge to Michigan’s state permitting primacy law.
On the week’s top news around renewable energy policy.
1. IRA funding freeze update – Money is starting to get out the door, finally: the EPA unfroze most of its climate grant funding it had paused after Trump entered office.
2. Scalpel vs. sledgehammer – House Speaker Mike Johnson signaled Republicans in Congress may take a broader approach to repealing the Inflation Reduction Act than previously expected in tax talks.
3. Endangerment in danger – The EPA is reportedly urging the White House to back reversing its 2009 “endangerment” finding on air pollutants and climate change, a linchpin in the agency’s overall CO2 and climate regulatory scheme.