PRINCE FREDERICK, Md. — Several Calvert County homes remain in precarious positions after funding freezes at the federal level. Last month, the county’s Division of Emergency Management (EM) reported the status of these projects to the county commissioners.
The projects impacted by these funding issues include six homes in Calvert. Three were being elevated above the flood plain to protect them from storm damage. The other three were cliff-side homes that the county wanted to acquire and demolish to prevent their eventual collapse.
In addition to the six homes being elevated or demolished with funding from federal hazard mitigation grants, EM regularly uses funds from the Emergency Management Planning Grant (EMPG) and State Homeland Security Program (SHSP). These three kinds of grants are overseen and distributed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
On Feb. 28, Calvert’s Division of Emergency Management learned from the Maryland Department of Emergency Management (MDEM) that FEMA had placed holds on a number of grant programs pending further review.
At the March 11 Calvert Board of County Commissioners meeting, Public Safety Director Dave McDowell, Emergency Manager Michael Grierson, and Hazard Mitigation Specialist Stacy O’Donnell presented a report of the situation and the work that would be most affected by the lack of federal funding. Besides the six homes, EM lessens their fiscal burden on county taxpayers by recouping some of their personnel costs from EMPG funding. EM also mentioned in their presentation that Solomons Volunteer Rescue Squad & Fire Department’s new Boat 3 might be impacted, but have since learned that project’s funding is secure and will not be impacted by the FEMA reviews.
Dr. Kara Buckmaster, Calvert’s emergency management specialist, explained that EM would keep to the terms of the grant agreement even if money was held up in Washington.
“Really our only option for those right now is to pause them,” Buckmaster said, “especially with projects that are receiving federal funding that’s already been awarded. If we replace that with local funding, that could be considered supplanting, and that violates the terms of our grant agreements. So if we do that, we would lose the funding completely whether they open it or not, and that could also trigger our requirement to repay funding. That risk isn’t something worth taking for any of these right now.”
It may be possible to use other federal or state grants for future projects. In addition, EM has been looking at more affordable, “non-structural mitigation actions,” Buckmaster said.
“We just started the process of looking into it, so I don’t have any specific ones at this time,” O’Donnell said. “We have a list of ongoing grant opportunities that we keep, so we want to go through each one of those and see if they have been affected by this funding freeze or if they’re still available for us to pursue.”
Hazard mitigation projects like the elevations, acquisitions and demolitions that are affected by this funding freeze are usually forward funded by the local jurisdictions who are most directly affected. Public servants like those at EM then petition agencies like FEMA for grant funding to ease the burden on local finances. At the March 11 presentation, EM said that they were still expecting $815,295.95 in grant reimbursements from FEMA.
“A lot of the work we do depends heavily upon federal grant funding,” Buckmaster said. “Losing that funding or having it paused effectively pauses what we can do. Like I mentioned earlier, especially because we don’t want to be found to be supplanting funding, we really just have to wait this out and see what’s gonna happen, see where it’s gonna go.”
Buckmaster said that the Building Resilient Infrastructures and Communities (BRIC) grant program had been canceled by FEMA. The loss of that program would be felt in Calvert and beyond.
“That was a primary funding opportunity that we pursued pretty much annually for risk reduction projects, especially for private properties,” Buckmaster said. “The cliff houses are a very well-known example of this. We do a lot of those acquisitions. Luckily for us, the ones that are currently funded aren’t funded through that program, but it’s a loss in opportunity for us and for the homeowners. That’s something we’re trying to work around now.”
Grierson said that his division’s recommendations to pause these grant-funded projects was based on the budget deficit in the county.
“The reason we decided locally to do a pause is just because of the budget deficit that was going on here in Calvert,” Grierson said. “Instead of asking for another hundred thousand, that the county was already trying to figure out how to find a couple million, we said, ‘We can put these on hold for a little bit.’”
Some of the grant-funded projects that EM tackles are not necessarily essential, Grierson said. However, there is one employee at EM who is completely grant funded: Emergency Management Analyst Colton Pounsberry.
“We could take the blow [of losing Pounsberry], but it wouldn’t be ideal for us,” Buckmaster said, “because he does a lot of really good work in our office in terms of training and maintaining programs that we use in the Emergency Operations Center.”
Calvert has been relatively lucky with the timing and scope of these funding issues. Grierson said other counties use these grants to pay their staff, who may be furloughed or laid off if funding isn’t restored soon. Buckmaster said that Calvert’s projects were able to be paused without being canceled, and none were financed by grants that have been eliminated like BRIC.
MDEM meets weekly with their local partners like Calvert’s EM. It was at one of these briefings that MDEM told EM that FEMA froze the funds to review the grant programs, but not what they were reviewing it for.
“Through those briefings, we’ve been made aware that the original reason was to facilitate FEMA reviewing all of their grant programs,” Buckmaster said. “In terms of what that criteria is and what is motivating that, we would defer to FEMA. We don’t want to speak on their behalf.”
Grierson explained that this funding setback would not prevent EM from responding to disasters like floods or storms.
“We are all fully funded by county government,” he said. “So it doesn’t stop us from working. We are fully funded positions here — again, we’re still here. Even if it does go away, we’re still gonna be here.”
“Emergency managers, we are a very resilient group of individuals,” Buckmaster said. “Through a lot of other informal conversations with colleagues, they’re looking at this as an opportunity for growth. They’re seeing it as a stepping stone. They’re seeing it as a hurdle and not a brick wall. It’s not something that’s going to stop us, because regardless of what’s happening with our funding, that’s not gonna stop these disasters. So we just have to find a way around it, and that’s what we’re gonna do. I do think that is really the rallying point for a lot of people in our position.”
“Do citizens need to take additional measures to prepare for emergencies? Regardless of what’s happening with federal grant funding: yes!” Buckmaster said. “We are always going to encourage county residents and small businesses and visitors to prepare themselves and their workplaces and their families, their households, their pets, whomever — we are always going to encourage that people take time to become educated about the threats and hazards that impact our community, that create risk, and learn about ways that they can minimize that risk, and then take action to prepare. We have a ton of resources online, on our website, the EM website, and we also have the Calvert Prepare mobile app that helps people.”
“You know, it’s blue-sky days. Who pays attention to getting ready for the storm coming until it’s here?” Grierson said. “We know people are busy and trying to make a living too, but sometimes it’s time well taken to pay attention a little bit and make sure you’re OK and make sure you do what you need to do locally. It helps the county as a whole. It lessens the amount of work that then we have to do when these big storms come through.”
“That’s our core mission,” Buckmaster said. “We teach people to prepare to take care of themselves for the first 72 hours, because depending on the size of the disaster, you’re not guaranteed to get access to emergency services if everything is completely overwhelmed or if our critical infrastructure like our roads have been damaged and we can’t get to you. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst, and take action today because by the time the disaster’s here, it’s too late.”
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