DETROIT, MI — Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, and Senior Advisor to the President and White House Infrastructure Coordinator Mitch Landrieu announce the project selections for nearly $3 billion in climate resilience funding as part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda. The selections, through two competitive grant programs, will help communities across the nation enhance resilience to climate change and extreme weather events.

The selections include $1.8 billion for critical resilience projects funded by the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) national competition and $642 million for Flood Mitigation Assistance (FMA) community-scale flood mitigation projects. These selections build on $160 million in BRIC and FMA selections that FEMA announced in May for efforts to support mitigation projects, project scoping, and adoption of hazard-resistant building codes. Combined, the funds awarded this grant cycle of the BRIC and FMA programs total nearly $3 billion including management costs.

“FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities or BRIC program continues to shift the focus from reactive disaster spending toward proactive investment in community resilience,” said Tom Sivak, Regional Administrator, FEMA Region 5. “I am encouraged to see so many states, communities, and tribal nations throughout Region 5 taking these monumental steps towards addressing the climate crisis and strengthening the nation’s resilience, including underserved communities that are most vulnerable.”

“From Hawaii to Maine, and everywhere in between, we are seeing the increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters, devastating communities nationwide. Though FEMA will always help communities respond and recover to these disasters, it is also paramount to build resilience before disasters strike,” Criswell said. “Thanks to President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we have more resources than ever to meet this moment and provide our state, local, territorial, and tribal partners with the resources they need to help us create a more resilient nation.”

The top five primary hazard sources of the projects selected in the national competition for each program include flooding, infrastructure failure, fire, drought, and dam or levee break hazards.

All FEMA Region 5 states, which include Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin, received BRIC selections for a total of $122 million. In addition, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, and Ohio received selections for the first time.

Additionally, five tribal nations, including Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, and Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin received selections for more than $10 million.

This includes critical mitigation projects and activities, several of which are nature-based solutions, to reduce natural hazard risks for states, local communities, tribes, and territories. Nature-based solutions are sustainable planning, design, environmental management and engineering practices that weave natural features or processes into the built environment to promote adaptation and resilience.

In Michigan, the project selections include:

This infrastructure project will replace approximately 18,800 feet of combined sewer mains within the Jefferson Chalmers neighborhood to increase the level of service to meet expected impact from a 10-year, one-hour storm event.This project will consist of the construction of two new relief sewers and is a continuation of Phase 1A of a similar project in 2016 to upsize the sewer system and alleviate basement back-up and urban flooding in high rain events for the city of Hamtramck.