N.C. Attorney General Jeff Jackson joined nearly 20 other states in filing a lawsuit against the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Wednesday, three months after the federal agency terminated hundreds of flood mitigation grants in April.
Last week, Tropical Storm Chantal may have foreshadowed the future costs communities will pay if they can’t complete these projects — and how the federal government's role in preparing communities for the future risks of climate change-fueled flooding to their infrastructure could be curtailed.
FEMA had awarded Hillsborough about $6 million to relocate its river pump station — nearly half the central North Carolina town’s total water and sewer fund, according to Mayor Mark Bell. Pump stations do exactly what their name implies: They pump water up so it can be transported somewhere else, such as a treatment facility or a reservoir.
The town had already spent half a million dollars on the relocation project and was about to put contracts out to bid.
“Along comes Tropical Storm Chantal, which does what? It floods the river pump station. It takes it offline,” Bell said. “So we don’t have the ability to pump the sewage that drains to that point.”
Nearly 7 million gallons of untreated sewage spilled into the Eno River. The town repaired the pumps after about five days, with preliminary cost estimates nearing $300,000.
The town had also received $1 million to improve its interconnection with neighboring water utility OWASA, which supplies water to Carrboro and Chapel Hill. These interconnections allow utilities to draw water from other counties when storms damage critical infrastructure.
“This would be the equivalent of Raleigh losing $216 million in grants,” Hillsborough Town Manager Eric Peterson said during a Board of Commissioners meeting in mid-April, pointing to the relative size of the two municipalities’ water utilities.
N.C. Attorney General Jeff Jackson said Hillsborough’s river pump station resembles many of the projects that lost their FEMA funding. Siler City, Salisbury and Sawmills also received grants to relocate or elevate pump stations out of the floodplain.
“It’s a lot of moving things to higher ground so they don’t get flooded,” Jackson said.
Finishing what he started: FEMA cancels Trump's flood grants
Although a hazard mitigation program has existed in some form for decades, FEMA launched the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grants during Trump’s first term in office. In the initial release announcing the termination of the program on April 4, 2025, “FEMA Ends Wasteful, Politicized Grant Program, Returning Agency to Core Mission of Helping Americans Recovering from Natural Disasters,” the agency criticized the $882 million in additional funds received from the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, calling it “wasteful and ineffective.”
- Note: The post has since been removed from the agency’s website, but you can view it here.
The lawsuit requests that federal courts place a preliminary injunction on FEMA, which would prevent the agency from spending BRIC grant funds on other programs. The lawsuit claims that ending the disaster mitigation program will cost states more money in the long run, stating that “each dollar spent on mitigation saves an average of $6 in post-disaster costs.”
FEMA was set to award North Carolina about $200 million for flood resiliency projects.
“Our case is basically, ‘Hey, FEMA, this is not your money,’” Jackson said. “Just as we had with the Department of Education two days ago, our lawsuit is saying, ‘Hey, you’re trying to freeze this money — it’s not yours to freeze. Congress authorized it.’”
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Mayor Bell said the town is exploring another FEMA grant through the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, as well as other sources of federal and state funding. But the future of the relocation project remains uncertain.
“What we do know with the alternate forms of funding is that it is nowhere near enough, even assuming the best-case scenario, to fill this hole,” Jackson said. ”Dozens of these projects will end up getting canceled if this particular fund goes away.”
