FEMA ends grant program, Stillwater Mayor frustrated

STILLWATER, Okla. (KFOR) — A popular FEMA program that helps communities and tribes across Oklahoma has come to a halt.

The Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program has helped pay for projects to reduce damage caused by flooding and tornadoes.

The City of Stillwater had hoped the grant would help improve its water pipeline system, but not anymore.

The program, launched during President Donald Trump's first term, is now being canceled for allegedly being a "wasteful, politicized grant program."

Stillwater Mayor Will Joyce says without it, their water infrastructure may be in jeopardy.

"This is exactly the way government money should be spent on proactive, efficient ways to prevent the government from having to spend money in the future," Mayor Joyce said. "The cancellation of the program doesn't make any sense from an efficiency standpoint."

Mayor Joyce was confused and frustrated after FEMA's BRIC program was canceled.

He says this strips cities like Stillwater, which were prepared to receive funds, and already had plans in place for them to complete their project.

"We have a pipeline that runs from Kaw Lake that delivers all of the water we use in Stillwater, and that needs upgrades," Mayor Joyce said. "It needs better local storage to prevent a natural disaster from causing us to not have access to water."

Mayor Joyce says they began applying for the grant when it started in 2020.

"We were selected to only one of a handful of cities through the help of our federal delegation in Washington," Mayor Joyce said.

Now, leaders in Washington are canceling the program and won't distribute funds.

"We've been in contact with our federal delegation, who honestly all told us that they were a little bit blindsided by it," said Mayor Joyce. "They didn't realize it was going to be canceled."

News 4 reached out to Oklahoma Emergency Management (OEM), which told us something similar, saying they were unaware the program was going to be cut.

The cancellation of FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant program poses a significant impact for several jurisdictions in Oklahoma, including the City of Stillwater. BRIC was a vital source of federal funding for large-scale mitigation projects aimed at helping communities prepare for natural disasters—such as strengthening infrastructure to withstand floods, upgrading stormwater systems, and implementing other critical resilience measures.

Stillwater had been selected to receive BRIC Direct Technical Assistance, a promising step toward developing a competitive project application. We were hopeful that, upon completion, the project would be well-positioned for funding in a future BRIC cycle. 

Unfortunately, there is not another grant program available through FEMA that could currently support this project. 

Oklahoma Emergency Management

Mayor Joyce says the cost of the project will now fall on the residents.

"We still have to fund a project to be able to build resiliency into our water system," Mayor Joyce said. "That funding will now have to come mostly out of people's water bills."

Also, if we have another natural disaster similar to the wildfires this year or the tornado outbreaks last year, Mayor Joyce says it may be too late to fix what will be broken.

"We desperately need this because if had these wildfires hit, we had a major leak on the pipeline, the existing pipeline that we have right now, where we have less than two days of water, and it would have been gone like that," Mayor Joyce said.

BRIC has distributed $5 billion in grants since its beginning in 2020.

Mayor Joyce says they will now have to scramble to find the funding they need for the project before it is too late.