Ongoing questions of budgeting for last year’s Cameron Peak Fire expose many of the complexities of disaster relief funding, according to Larimer County Office of Emergency Management Director Lori Hodges.
For a fire as large as Cameron Peak, officials have to navigate a web of state and federal programs, many with their own specific rules and qualifications. Barring any future flooding events, the fire has an expected total cost of $16.8 million, Hodges said.
“When I worked at the state everybody used to ask me ‘Can you give me a cheat sheet for all these programs?’” Hodges said. “And you just can’t…All of the thresholds are different, all of the cost shares are different. It’s very difficult to explain outside of a specific disaster and what you’re getting for that.”
One example that was presented to the Larimer Board of County Commissioners on Monday: While the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) helped pay for large amounts of the recovery from the Cameron Peak Fire, subsequent floods that directly resulted from the fire are treated as a separate emergency, and many did not meet the criteria for disaster relief.
The Black Hollow Flood, for instance, cost approximately $441,000, all of which was paid for by the county. Hodges said that county staff have had discussions with FEMA and state legislators hoping to address the problem.
Another instance of the complexity of applying for multiple programs concerns environmental reviews, Hodges said. Different programs might have different criteria for environmental reviews in order to qualify for funding.
“We should only have to do one environmental review,” Hodges said. “If we’re looking at two or three different programs, we have to do three different environmental reviews for the same project. That’s really costly and it doesn’t make any sense.”
Other grants can be used only for certain types of land, whether that be public or private. If the disaster affects an area that includes both of those, then that complicates the recovery project.
The Office of Emergency Management also informed the Board of County Commissioners that an application for a grant was denied by FEMA because it concerned hazardous tree removal on private roads, saying it does not constitute a public threat. The county is appealing the decision.
“Our appeal is trying to make the argument that all of this land is surrounded by national forest, which people use all the time. And therefore all of these roads and all of this land is in the public interest, and it is a public threat,” Hodges said.
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November 25, 2021 at 06:06AM
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Cameron Peak reveals complexity of disaster relief funding - Loveland Reporter-Herald
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