FEMA has restarted the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program. For many communities, that does not answer the question that matters most: which projects can still be built?
BRIC was designed to pay for protection before a disaster, including flood-control, wildfire, drainage, shoreline and other hazard-mitigation work. But the program’s interruption created a second risk alongside the hazards themselves. Local governments may have spent years developing engineering plans, environmental documents, matching-fund commitments and grant applications without knowing whether federal support would remain available.
The practical distinction is easy to state and difficult to manage:
A grant announcement is not an award. An award is not an obligation. An obligation is not a reimbursement. And a reimbursement is not a completed project.
The numbers show a system stuck between approval and delivery
A September 2026 Government Accountability Office review found that FEMA awarded 1,245 BRIC subgrants during the program’s first four grant cycles, covering fiscal years 2020 through 2023. Those grants represented approximately $2.5 billion in allocated funding.
By March 2025, however, FEMA had reimbursed only $62 million, and just 37 subgrants had completed their work and entered the closeout process. Communities had submitted applications requesting roughly $16 billion, more than three times the approximately $4.8 billion announced as available during those cycles.
Those figures do not establish that every delayed project was failing or that every unreimbursed grant was in immediate danger. They do establish that the program was moving money and construction far more slowly than the public language around resilience funding might suggest.
Then the pipeline stopped. According to GAO, FEMA did not award new BRIC subgrants or obligate additional funds from April 2025 until early March 2026.
A restart does not erase the interruption
FEMA announced in April 2025 that it was ending BRIC and canceling applications from earlier funding cycles. After states challenged that decision in court, FEMA announced in March 2026 that it was resuming the program and issued a combined fiscal-year 2024 and 2025 funding opportunity.
FEMA’s current BRIC program page says the application period for that opportunity is closed and that selections remain under review. The page also states that older subapplications from the January 2025 opportunity will not be reviewed.
That is a restart. It is not a restoration of time.
Engineering work may need to be updated. Construction estimates may no longer be reliable. Matching funds may have been committed elsewhere. Permits and environmental reviews may have moved closer to expiration. A project that was affordable when first proposed may require a larger local contribution after a year of inflation, higher borrowing costs and changed construction conditions.
FEMA’s own process therefore leaves communities with two separate questions: What happens to previously selected or partially developed projects, and what happens to the communities that must submit new applications while still carrying the cost of the old process?
California shows what uncertainty looks like locally
California offers a useful view of the problem because its hazards are varied and its resilience projects are often large, technically complex and expensive.
In a June 2025 guidance document, the California Office of Emergency Services said it was working with FEMA to understand which California BRIC projects were affected by the cancellation. The document said the status of extensions, scope changes and budget modifications was unclear, and advised communities that the decision to continue implementing approved projects had to be made locally.
That is an important sentence because it places the immediate financial risk close to the ground. A city or county may continue paying engineers, consultants and contractors in the hope that federal support returns. Or it may pause work and risk losing time, momentum, permits, staff capacity and the project’s place in a future funding queue.
A March 2026 California climate-adaptation discussion paper identified 35 BRIC projects that could lose funding during the disruption. It described a Sutter Bypass levee project that had been planning around approximately $50 million in federal support, an Oakland-Alameda flood-adaptation project affected by a $50 million grant freeze and a Napa County wildfire-mitigation program facing a $35 million funding loss.
Those examples should not be read as proof that each project was permanently canceled. The document itself describes communities searching for alternate funding and adjusting project plans. That is the point: the interruption changed the work even before final project outcomes were known.
The burden of delay is not evenly distributed
Wealthier jurisdictions may be able to advance design work with local funds, borrow against future reimbursements or hire grant specialists to resubmit applications. Smaller cities, rural counties and tribal governments may have fewer ways to carry those costs.
The difference is not only administrative. A community that postpones a drainage project may remain exposed to flooding through another construction season. A wildfire-mitigation program that loses its federal match may reduce the acreage it can treat. A shoreline project that misses its construction window may face higher costs when erosion continues.
No one should claim that a particular future disaster will be caused by a delayed BRIC project. The more precise concern is that delay preserves exposure. Risk that could have been reduced remains in place while the public pays for another round of planning.
What FEMA and local governments should publish
The public does not need another general assurance that the resilience program is active. It needs project-level information.
For each previously selected or newly submitted project, FEMA and state agencies should identify:
- whether the project was selected, obligated, suspended, canceled or required to reapply;
- how much money has actually been reimbursed;
- what local matching funds have been spent;
- whether engineering, environmental review or permits must be updated;
- the current estimated construction cost and schedule;
- the effect of the interruption on the project’s scope; and
- who is responsible for costs created by delay.
FEMA’s restart will be meaningful only if communities can answer those questions without reconstructing the history of their projects from scattered correspondence and changing guidance.
This is the same delivery problem that appears in other infrastructure programs: being listed, approved or announced is not the same as being built. Fresno’s transportation planning process raised that distinction for roads, bridges and drainage projects. BRIC applies it before the disaster rather than after one.
It also differs from the problem described in the recovery of Alabama and Florida after Hurricane Isaias or the case-management deadline facing Los Angeles wildfire survivors. Those stories concerned systems after disaster. BRIC concerns whether protection exists before the next one arrives.
The next test is not the announcement
FEMA has restored the program as an administrative matter. Communities now need to know whether it has restored a workable path from application to construction.
The next evidence will come through selection notices, project-status records, reimbursement data, revised cost estimates and construction schedules. If those records remain difficult to obtain, communities will continue making expensive decisions with incomplete information.
Disaster prevention is politically quieter than disaster response. A completed levee, drainage channel or fuel-reduction project may never produce the dramatic images associated with a disaster declaration. But prevention is still public infrastructure, and it still requires a reliable chain of responsibility.
FEMA restarted BRIC. The communities that planned around it are still waiting to learn whether the protection will arrive before the next flood, fire or storm—or whether they will have to begin the process again.
