Sponsors (7)
The bill lets utilities use emergency restoration funds to add hazard mitigation—improving resilience and reducing outage impacts for many customers—but may raise federal costs and produce uneven benefits that favor higher‑revenue/urban areas and exclude restorations done before enactment.
Rural and urban customers (and the utilities that serve them) can see fewer prolonged outages and faster long‑term recovery because utilities may carry out cost‑effective hazard mitigation while performing emergency §403 power restoration.
Utilities and facilities that receive emergency §403 restoration aid remain eligible for separate §406 mitigation grants, increasing their chances of securing additional resilience funding.
Low‑income and rural communities risk being left behind if utilities prioritize mitigation projects where revenue or population density is higher (e.g., urban or wealthier areas).
Expanding eligible uses of §403 funds to include mitigation could increase federal disaster spending and raise costs to taxpayers.
Limiting the change to funds appropriated after enactment means facilities that already received restoration aid before the law may be unable to benefit, producing uneven application and potential fairness concerns.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Allows electric utilities to perform cost-effective hazard mitigation during FEMA §403 emergency power restoration and preserves §406 eligibility for those facilities.
Official title: Amend the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act to authorize Federal agencies to provide certain essential assistance for hazard mitigation for electric utilities, and for other purposes.
Introduced April 10, 2025 by James Lankford · Last progress April 10, 2025
Allows electric utilities to carry out cost-effective hazard mitigation work at the same time they receive FEMA Stafford Act §403 emergency power restoration funding, and clarifies that receiving §403 restoration assistance does not bar a utility from later receiving §406 mitigation assistance if otherwise eligible. The change applies only to funds appropriated on or after the law’s enactment date.