The Long Road to Recovery

Disaster Relief Funding and Small-Town Politics

As hundreds of volunteers, local VFDs, and Good Samaritans take on a perilous journey and provide aid to their fellow man in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, in the backs of our minds we know that these feel-good stories will disappear from our feeds and the greater public consciousness. Another hurricane might hit, a bigger news item might overtake the fact that this could have easily been (and still is) “Kamala’s Katrina,” but as the victims are poor White folk, we know that the response has been sluggish, to say the least. Poor photo ops aside, the phrase “The White Man walks alone” couldn’t be more clear as footage and news stories about the survivors and volunteers unfold.

I don’t anticipate efforts to be directly applied to the most affected areas. This administration has emphasized “Climate Justice” far more than any other, and will prioritize certain affected zones more than others to ensure that federal dollars go to their preferred patrons instead of those who actually need it. The Justice 40 Initiative (J40) is one such example, a federal initiative presented by President Biden as part of Executive Order 14008 on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad which stipulates that forty percent of overall benefits of certain Federal investments must flow to disadvantaged communities that are underserved, marginalized, and overburdened by pollution. You can tell what redistributive politics looks like, the Democratic Party machine well at work for jobs programs and for funding towards specific communities. It even has its own mapping tools, if you’re so interested or work closely with projects that require a NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) review.

This doesn’t mean that every single federal dollar of disaster relief is going to go somewhere it shouldn’t. And in fact there will be millions if not billions of dollars in local grants, money, and administration that will either slip away from your fingers or simply go to waste because no one even applied for it. Today, I want to talk specifically about local and state dollars. I am a Government Development Planner by trade (and just like Stalin, I work on five-year plans), so I wanted to take my day job and subject matter expertise to those of you who might need it now or may want to take advantage of it years down the line. Anyone who has been through a natural disaster of any kind, whether a flood, earthquake, tornado, or hurricane, knows that recovery doesn’t really stop once the lights get back on and you’re done fighting with the insurance companies.

The Dollarydoo Rat Race

Depending on your state (I’m primarily speaking on FL, GA, SC, and NC), the funding mechanisms for emergency funding or disaster recovery grants may be in areas different from what you’re used to on a federal level. However, three areas are going to be of utmost importance:

1. The USDA Rural Development Office

2. Your local Council of Government or Regional Planning Authority

3. County Commissioners/City Council

Most if not all grants, even Water Board Emergency grants for sewage and wastewater treatment infrastructure, are going to require your elected officials’ signatures on a resolution approving the grant application. More importantly, your town may not even be aware of what funding opportunities are out there. Anyone who has participated in local government is generally aware of the apathy, cluelessness, or lack of brain power (depending on your location). I can personally attest to countless meetings I’ve scheduled with mayors, county commissioners, and city managers about funding opportunities that just don’t happen because they don’t put the effort into actually applying. The practice of politics at a local level is the hand-holding of the mentally incompetent. Perhaps I’m jaded, but this is really how politics works when you happen to know more than the guy who is supposed to represent you. (If you want to have fun with “Democracy,” why not scale that up?)

For a lot of these smaller municipalities, there is usually within an hour’s drive a USDA Rural Development (RD) office with a regional representative. If you are part of a Volunteer Fire Department (VFD), a Water Authority, or Rural Water District, or if you work for a small town of less than 10,000 people, then you need to talk to that guy as soon as you can. There are millions of dollars in RD funds that can be used on everything from sewer lines to rebuilding roads damaged by storms. Your USDA Office (while all of this is subject to funding prioritization) has millions set aside for RD.

You and your local community leaders need to be speaking with your USDA RD Rep to start planning out next year’s funding priorities for infrastructure. While the immediate relief efforts are underway, you need to be seriously considering what the next six years are going to look like in terms of infrastructure, and then assume another ten before anything really gets fixed. I am being very generous in regard to timelines: things usually take longer, whether that’s due to supply chain issues or trying to work within the realms of BABA (“Buy American, Build American”). This also gives you time to start planning with local business leaders and other groups to get more investment into your town.

Almost every state has a Water Resource Board, along with Rural Development set-aside grants for assistance to local communities. South Carolina, for instance, has the Rural Infrastructure Authority. State grants for roads, water, and hospitals are available courtesy of the South Carolina Rural Infrastructure Authority and their annual set of grants. Each state has a Department of Commerce where you can apply for competitive Community Development Block Grants. These CDBGs, which are funded out of HUD — don’t get me started — can be used to drop hundreds of thousands of dollars in your area for rebuilding and revitalizing. There is so much information on CDBGs that it would take an hours-long presentation, but I would urge you to look into them and to speak with your Council of Government or local development officer in your city’s government.

I cannot emphasize enough that all of these grants are competitive and that there is NO GUARANTEE. Take the Psalmist very seriously when he writes not to put your trust in princes, in the sons of men, in whom there is no salvation. You will have to do a lot of the heavy lifting yourself if you seriously care about getting done what you want done in order to rebuild. This is not an advertisement for anything pozzed along the lines of “Build Back Better”; I acknowledge that because Helene has primarily affected the enemy of the regime (Whites), this may not go as planned.

The State of Georgia has its own Environmental Protection Department. Solid Waste Trust Fund Grant Programs should be looked into if your town’s sewage treatment plants were torn up by the hurricane. Most importantly, you’re going to want to speak with Councils of Government (COGs), your County Commissioners, and regional planning staff within your locality. It will be a rat race for money! Additionally, most states have set aside grants for emergencies. In a project I worked on, we had budgeted for natural disasters, allowing towns affected by flash flooding and tornados to have money that was desperately needed to keep food banks running and hospitals’ power on. Immediate emergency relief and insurance will not cover everything; it takes years for towns to recover from damages and storms, and many COGs hire extra staff just to take care of damages from tornados and hurricanes to handle these new projects. Depending on the direction of a new administration in 2025, the Economic Development Administration will be another funding avenue to pursue with your local government and regional planning staff. This will do well for local colleges and tech hubs.

If you get federal dollars, some if not all of these projects will require a NEPA review, for environmental oversight and things such as being in a flood plain or coastal barrier protections. If you have tribes or something that requires an archeological study, DO NOT procure an archeologist affiliated with a tribe or any other particular ethnic activist group, as he will find a reason to take the land away from you. This applies more to areas with Indian history, but it is worth noting for future projects.

More storms and disasters and other acts of God will hit the United States, as they do every year, but being prepared and being able to take initiative in disaster relief and emergency management means knowing how to navigate the bureaucracy and the process to get that funding. My channel email is available to anyone who wants to know more about how these funding opportunities work, or at least to be pointed in the right direction.

The Old Glory Club is filled with men of various backgrounds and trades working to aid those we know and those we don’t know who have been affected by Helene. If this helps just one person, it will have been worth it in the end. Be safe, talk to your local authorities, and know that you aren’t alone.