Washington D.C. – December 16 – The SmarterSafer Coalition submitted the following letter to Senate and House Appropriators.
Dear Chair Collins, Vice Chair Murray, Chair Cole, and Ranking Member DeLauro: SmarterSafer is a national coalition of environmental advocates, taxpayer organizations, insurance and reinsurance interests, housing groups, and other stakeholders committed to advancing environmentally responsible and fiscally sound approaches to natural catastrophe mitigation and public safety. As the Appropriations Committees and all relevant Subcommittees continue work on their respective appropriations bills, we urge you to prioritize initiatives that reduce disaster risk, strengthen community resilience, and safeguard taxpayer dollars. Each year, escalating wildfire seasons, severe drought, extreme heat, hurricanes, and destructive flooding place a growing strain on families, ecosystems, infrastructure, and the federal budget. Strategic, data-driven pre-disaster investments across departments, including the Department of the Interior, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Department of Agriculture’s U.S. Forest Service, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and others, are essential to reducing these mounting costs.
The nation continues to face significant wildfire risks that threaten communities, infrastructure, and natural resources. We encourage the relevant Subcommittees to support Department of the Interior Wildland Fire Management programs, including Preparedness, Fuels Management, and Burned Area Rehabilitation, as well as the Joint Fire Science Program, Bureau of Land Management rangeland restoration initiatives, and National Park Service wildfire resilience efforts. These programs promote proactive management that reduces hazardous fuels, restores natural processes, and enhances ecosystem health. Nature-based strategies such as watershed restoration, reforestation, and post-fire recovery help restore natural function, improve long-term ecological health, and reduce the risk of downstream flooding and erosion. These efforts enhance community safety, protect ecosystems, and provide lasting benefits for water quality, habitat, and local economies.
We also urge your committees to champion data-driven resilience efforts across agencies such as the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, and the EPA. Investments equip communities with modern hydrology, modernized and forward-looking mapping, and predictive hazard-risk modeling. At EPA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), continued support for water infrastructure resilience, ecosystem restoration, coastal resilience, and environmental data and mapping tools enables federal, state, Tribal, and local partners to reduce exposures and prepare for emerging challenges.
In addition, we encourage support for FEMA’s suite of hazard mitigation and resilience programs, including the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program (BRIC), Flood Mitigation Assistance, the National Flood Insurance Program Risk Rating 2.0 data systems, and Flood Hazard Mapping and Risk Analysis. These programs reduce repetitive losses and deliver significant long-term taxpayer savings by supporting mitigation projects with proven benefit-cost ratios. We also encourage Congress to continue emphasizing policies that discourage new development in high-risk areas, including clear standards to avoid new construction within the 100-year floodplain, to ensure taxpayer dollars are not unintentionally underwriting repetitive and predictable losses.
Tribal nations, rural communities, and small local governments often face disproportionate risk while lacking the technical capacity needed to implement resilience projects. We urge your committees to support programs that strengthen local planning, expand access to environmental and hazard-mitigation data, and help communities navigate federal resources. Partnerships that empower local leadership, combined with long-term funding stability, enable communities to undertake nature-based and pre disaster mitigation projects that have proven to save lives and reduce future federal expenditures. Nature-based mitigation solutions are a tremendous value for taxpayers, simultaneously decreasing risk while promoting environmental protection and tourism. During Hurricane Sandy, for example, wetlands reduced damages by more than 22 percent in half of the areas directly affected by the storm, and by as much as 30 percent in some states, saving an estimated 625 million dollars in direct flood damage. This is one of many examples demonstrating the high return on investment for natural infrastructure and mitigation.
Finally, we encourage the Committees to continue supporting public/private partnerships that leverage the expertise and scale of private markets to enhance risk reduction. Strong collaboration among federal agencies, the private sector, and local stakeholders improves the availability of risk information, increases community preparedness, and aligns incentives for mitigation. These approaches advance environmental stewardship, protect property and infrastructure, and ultimately reduce the escalating federal costs of post-disaster recovery.
SmarterSafer greatly appreciates the Committees’ bipartisan efforts to build a more resilient nation.
Of course, it is our hope that the committees will continue to consider the costs to taxpayers, both in terms of programmatic funding and of the savings and protection offered through pre-disaster mitigation. By prioritizing proactive mitigation, nature based solutions, sound science, and equitable community support across all appropriations bills, Congress can significantly reduce long-term disaster costs while protecting natural resources and enhancing public safety. We stand ready to work with you to ensure that federal investments are effective, efficient, and aligned with the country’s long-term environmental and fiscal needs.
Sincerely,
The SmarterSafer Coalition
Cc: Chairs/Ranking Members, Senate Appropriations Subcommittees and House Appropriations
Subcommittees