When the axe fell in early 2025 on $882 million in federal funding aimed at helping communities prepare for future flooding, it came paired with a critique of the program's very purpose.
The Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program "was yet another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program," an unidentified Federal Emergency Management Agency spokesperson asserted in an April 4 press release. "It was more concerned with political agendas than helping Americans affected by natural disasters."
Emily Granoff, the deputy director of housing community and development in Chelsea, Mass., was assisting another town with smaller-scale grant work before the BRIC cuts were announced. Upon hearing the news, that community reached out to Granoff see if Chelsea's funding was impacted, and she assured them that it was not.
But both of the Boston suburbs of Chelsea and Everett had money on the line — a $120 million flood resilience project for the Island End River that included a storm surge barrier, a storm surge control facility and wetland restoration set to begin construction in 2026.
"I looked up the press release," Granoff said. "And then I cried for a bit."
The local toll would not be fully felt for two weeks, when the state of Massachusetts estimated that some $90 million in funding and potential grants would be pulled, almost $50 million of which was dedicated to the Chelsea and Everett endeavor.
Overnight, project managers overseeing resilient park and stormwater flooding projects, updating drinking water and watershed regulations and preparing for the best ways to hold rising waters at bay rushed to triage.
Granoff was among them as the project manager for Chelsea in a partnership with Everett.
Roughly between and beneath the ground of the two Gateway Cities — both historic industrial midsized urban centers — passes the Island End River. This tributary of the Mystic River generates dramatic flooding during serious coastal storms, sending ft. of water rushing over nearby roadways as well as commercial and industrial sites, noted CommonWealth Beacon, a Boston-based nonprofit and non-partisan news service, on Aug. 24.
The risk of worsening storm surges is difficult to overstate, Granoff said as she walked the border of the proposed project site around the spot where the river dips into a massive culvert to pass beneath her city.
By 2081, the kind of one-in-100-year storm surge events proportional to Hurricane Sandy could be annual occurrences, according to a 2022 study from the Woodwell Climate Research Center.
Within the 2070 flood risk zone sits Chelsea High School, a Market Basket, U.S. Highway 1, Massachusetts Highway 16, commuter rail and freight rail tracks, a Federal Bureau of Investigation building and the New England Produce Center that distributes produce to 8 million people across the Northeast.
"Basically 10 years ago, the cities of Everett and Chelsea were evaluating their flood vulnerability and found that Island End River was a huge one — not just for us, but for those 8 million people and for anyone who drives into Boston from the North Shore," Granoff said.
She added that those highways and the produce center will be flooded from a coastal rainstorm, and because it is not feasible to move them, they must be protected.
Storm Surge Barriers, Control Facilities Offer Solutions
When Chelsea and Everett were first developed in the 18th and 19th centuries, wetlands became the site of a heavily industrial district full of critical infrastructure.
Over the past decade, though, local planners determined that defending that infrastructure would require a barrier to prevent water coming up from the culvert beneath the island and spilling into its old riverbed and marshland path.
Part of the solution is a 3,000-sq.-ft., $42 million underground storm surge control facility that would sink 8-10 ft. below ground and rise as much as 8 ft. above ground next to the small M&T bank building near the outlets of the Market and Beacham street culverts.
Because the river flows beneath the area, an above-ground storm barrier that stops water from washing over the land would not stop the surge from blasting through the large culvert tunnel and flooding out through storm drains. If built, the control facility would manage the flow of water under Chelsea and Everett while the barrier would keep most of the water from flooding the cities.
Walking along the path where the 4,460 linear-ft. storm surge barrier would go involves weaving in and around city and private land as the wall includes gates to allow people and vehicles to pass though when the area is not flooded. The barrier's path has changed over the years to avoid crossing rail tracks or to make sure the businesses along the nearby port can access the water on which they depend.
On the Everett side, the barrier would wind around commercial sites to higher ground, ending roughly where 2070 estimates expect just 1-ft. of flooding in intense storm events, an annoying but manageable height.
In Chelsea, plans call for creating a new high ground where the barrier can taper off behind a revamped riverwalk and restored salt marsh that are part of the 18,000 sq. ft. of nature-based resilience improvements that include wetland upgrades.
Loss of BRIC Funding Affects All of Mass.
The Island End River project was the largest chunk of the $90 million in Bay State BRIC cuts, but the impact of the federal action will be felt throughout Massachusetts.
"The Trump Administration has suddenly ripped the rug out from under cities and towns that had been promised funding to help them upgrade their roads, bridges, buildings and green spaces to mitigate risk and prevent disasters in the future," Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said in April. "This makes our communities less safe and will increase costs for residents, municipalities and businesses."
In dramatically re-orienting FEMA — the federal agency responsible for coordinating the country's disaster relief efforts — the White House cancelled all BRIC applications from Fiscal Years 2020-2023, imperiling states from New England to the Gulf Coast. Any undistributed funds would be immediately returned either to the Disaster Relief Fund or the U.S. Treasury, according to FEMA.
Two major Boston resilience projects — Moakley Park in South Boston and Tenean Beach in Dorchester — are either having millions in funding pulled or their grant applications cancelled, the CommonWealth Beacon noted. Funding for culvert projects in Acton, Brockton, Grafton, North Adams and Taunton also were eliminated.
More than two dozen Democratic members on Capitol Hill sent a letter to the acting FEMA administrator on April 23, urging the administration to reconsider the cuts.
"Ending the FEMA BRIC program is a terrible mistake and marks a huge setback for many climate-vulnerable cities and towns in my district," wrote Mass. Rep. Seth Moulton, who helmed the letter.
Newburyport Mayor Sean Reardon told the CommonWealth Beacon that his town was expecting to receive a BRIC grant to protect its watershed and drinking water supply, but "will now need to find other resources to do this important work."
Ironically, project proponents point out that slicing away BRIC funding in the interests of shrinking the federal budget could actually cut the other way. Projects must go through a cost-benefit analysis to compare the upsides of a resilience project to what it would cost to build. If disaster washes up to a municipality's doors due to flooding, FEMA gets the call and bears the cost.
Or, at least, that was how the system worked for decades before Trump signed an executive order in March directing state and local governments to "play a more active and significant role" in resilience and preparedness. The administration has since denied some federal funding to disaster-struck areas.
Without FEMA Funding, Math Looks Bleak
Along with the $50 million BRIC funding, Chelsea and Everett expected to contribute $10 million in combined local funds. Planners have been working with the state to secure $45 million in funding and seeking the remaining $14.8 million through additional state and private foundation grants.
"We've had warning signs and storms where we've seen how disruptive it can be to have even a foot or two of flooding," Granoff said, standing alongside a roadway that sees hundreds of trucks roll through on a daily basis with produce and other goods, just a short walk from the culvert. "One of the great things about this project was that we were gonna prevent it from ever happening. We saw a risk, … we all agreed it was a risk, and we were gonna say we can fix this."
Now, officials in each city are looking at whether it would be possible to break the project into pieces, but due to Chelsea and Everett each having a high proportion of low-income residents, neither town has the budget to support projects of this scale.
"Municipalities aren't built to do this kind of huge infrastructure project," Granoff said. "But even with all that, we were gonna do it. We'll still have to do it."
