Kristi Noem under fire for $1 billion disaster relief 'logjam': 'Sitting on her desk'
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has created a "logjam" for roughly $1 billion in Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster prevention projects around the country, NOTUS reported on Wednesday morning.
Among the projects that have been essentially mothballed as a result of the delay is a plan to bury transmission lines near Los Alamos, New Mexico, to prevent the risk of wildfires, an issue that has occurred multiple times in the past. “We were approved last summer, and it’s been sitting on her desk since,” said local utilities manager Philo Shelton.
"The plan to protect Los Alamos and the critical national security research laboratory there has been held up by Noem’s requirement that she personally approve all Department of Homeland Security-funded projects over $100,000," said the report. "Since July, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has approved hazard mitigation grants that cost more than $100,000 in only three states, according to a NOTUS review of publicly available data and internal FEMA documents."
Those three states are Georgia, North Carolina and Oklahoma, per the report — and those only went through because some well-connected Republican state officials pulled strings in the Trump administration behind the scenes.
"In December, FEMA granted about $1.5 million in federal spending for hazard mitigation projects in Georgia, two of which are located primarily in Republican Rep. Buddy Carter’s district," said the report. "In early January, North Carolina was granted at least $29 million primarily to buy out homes flooded and destroyed during Hurricane Helene. Most recently, in late January, Oklahoma’s long-awaited hazard mitigation projects received final approval for more than $12 million."
This comes after reporting that Noem's $100,000 funding approval rule also resulted in delays to deploy FEMA search-and-rescue teams during last year's devastating Central Texas floods that killed over 100 people.