Sponsors (3)
Official title: To amend section 203 of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act to establish within the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program a dedicated rural flood resilience supplemental allocation providing formula-based pass-through grants to rural communities through a set-aside from the Federal Emergency Management Agency Disaster Relief Fund, and for other purposes.
Introduced July 21, 2026 by Pat Harrigan · Last progress July 21, 2026
The bill directs substantially more, more predictable mitigation funding (and simplifies access for small, rural, and Tribal applicants) at the cost of reduced immediate disaster‑response flexibility, new administrative burdens, and tradeoffs between small/nature‑based projects and larger engineered mitigation needs.
State, tribal, rural, and local governments (and the communities they serve) get multiple dedicated and more predictable funding streams for mitigation — including a permanent BRIC set‑aside (10% of prior-year DRF), formula-based annual mitigation allocations, a rural SAFE fund (2% of DRF), and a small‑projects set‑aside — increasing steady resources for hazard reduction.
Small, rural, first‑time, low‑capacity, and Tribal applicants face lower administrative and technical barriers because of streamlined, short plain‑language applications, pre‑application assistance, waived or simplified benefit‑cost requirements for very small projects, and deadlines to speed decisions and disbursements.
The bill explicitly allows and encourages nature‑based and green infrastructure projects (wetlands, living shorelines, reforestation, riparian buffers), providing environmental co‑benefits like improved water quality, habitat, and recreation while reducing flood risks.
Dedicating fixed shares of funds (e.g., BRIC 10% of prior‑year DRF, SAFE rural 2% of DRF, and set‑asides for small projects) reduces the pool available for immediate post‑disaster response or for larger, high‑cost mitigation projects, limiting FEMA and the President's budgetary flexibility in major disaster years.
New deadlines, reporting, rapid pass‑through requirements, application rules, and oversight obligations may strain administrative capacity at states, tribes, and small local governments, increasing compliance costs and risking delayed project implementation where staffing or systems are limited.
Waiving benefit‑cost analysis and allowing very small expedited awards raises the risk that some funded projects will have weak economic justification, producing inefficient spending of limited public resources.
Based on analysis of 12 sections of legislative text.
Creates a SAFE Rural predisaster mitigation program and fund, mandates small-project set-asides, makes BRIC/mitigation mandatory, and directs DRF transfers and recurring deposits to finance rural flood resilience.
Creates a SAFE Rural program and fund to direct dedicated predisaster flood-mitigation assistance to rural areas, Tribal lands, and territories. It requires a new small-project set‑aside for subgrants, establishes formulas and plan requirements for allocating predisaster mitigation money, and directs a transfer of funds from the Disaster Relief Fund to seed the new program. Changes make the predisaster hazard mitigation program mandatory, expand tribal eligibility, permit nature‑based/green infrastructure projects, streamline applications for very small projects, require the President to issue implementing regulations within 180 days, and set a fixed percentage set‑aside for BRIC‑like funding and for the SAFE Rural Fund each year.