Trump administration cuts turned rural towns into sitting ducks for disasters

The town of Duryea, Pa., is on the banks of the Lackawanna River. Residents can see the low, placid water from their churches, schools and houses.

But when there’s a lot of rain, the river rises and can cause catastrophic flooding.

Since the 1970s, a tall earthen levee has protected Duryea from floodwaters. But the river gets higher than it used to. Changes in the river due to development, combined with the effects of climate change, which makes heavy rain more common, mean that Duryea faces more water now than in the past.

“We are seeing increased storms and increased water volumes,” says Laura Holbrook, the director of the flood protection authority for Luzerne County, Pa., where the town is located. The levee in Duryea needs to be raised by about 3 feet to adequately protect the town, she explains.

The clock is ticking to get the upgrades done, because a disaster could happen at any time. Massive floods rocked the county in 2011 and 2014. Multiple major floods have caused millions of dollars of damage in the area around Duryea in just the last three years, and the risk is only growing. The heaviest rainstorms in the Northeast drop 60% more rain today than they did in the mid-20th century, according to the National Climate Assessment.

“It definitely keeps me up at night,” Holbrook says.

However, getting the Duryea levee fixed has been impossible so far. Local authorities sank hundreds of thousands of dollars into designs for the levee upgrades, in the hopes of quickly applying for $11 million in federal funds to complete the repairs.

But there’s been no way to access federal grants for such projects over the last year because the Trump administration has withheld billions of dollars for disaster preparedness and prevention that local governments, especially those in rural areas, rely on.

Earlier this month, in response to a lawsuit by 20 states, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) agreed to restart the largest federal grant program for disaster preparedness. Competition for those funds will likely be intense, because two years worth of applicants will be vying for one year’s worth of money, according to public filings released last week by FEMA. The administration will prioritize funding “major infrastructure projects” according to a FEMA press release.

FEMA did not answer questions from NPR about how long it will take for money to begin flowing again, and whether climate-related projects will be eligible going forward.

The delay and uncertainty mean Duryea and hundreds of small towns are still waiting on the federal government to disburse money that Congress already appropriated, says Andrew Rumbach, who studies disaster policy at the Urban Institute think tank.

“We’re a country full of sitting ducks, unfortunately,” Rumbach says. “They’re vulnerable to hazards like floods and wildfires, and the climate is changing and making these events more common and more costly.”

Small, rural communities like Duryea rely on the federal government to pay for infrastructure projects that protect residents against extreme weather.

“We don’t have the money to do it, and we don’t have the tax base to do it,” says Keith Moss, the emergency management director for Duryea, which has about 5,000 residents.

The cost of upgrading the local levee is about three times the town’s total annual budget.

“They don’t have the resources,” says Rep. Rob Bresnahan, R-Pa., who represents Luzerne County and grew up in the area. “They just don’t have $10 million laying around.”

Under the first Trump admin…