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| | | | |  | | By Debra Kahn | | | | | 
Scituate, Mass., one of the wealthiest towns in the state, has received more than $9 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to elevate beachfront homes. | Walter Bibikow/Getty Images | FLOOD FOULS — One of the federal government's main tools for helping homeowners adapt to climate change is riddled with inequities. Homeowners in white or wealthy communities are taking the lion's share of FEMA grants in most states to elevate their homes out of floods' way, Tom Frank finds in an investigation for POLITICO's E&E News. It's not surprising, but it's stark and indisputable. Policies set by Congress, FEMA and state officials over three decades that restrict grants to people who own homes and can pay for costs not covered by the agency have made it nearly impossible for people who are Black or Hispanic, or who have limited income, to get federal elevation money in most states, E&E News found. There are 18 states that have received at least $5 million from FEMA to elevate homes. In 12 of them, more than half the money has gone to communities that are overwhelmingly white or wealthy — defined as more than 90 percent of the population being non-Hispanic white, or having a median household income of more than $100,000.
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| FEMA's elevation grants, worth as much as $550,000, are the triple crown of flood mitigation. They increase the value of a home, protect it from flooding and destruction, and save tens of thousands of dollars in insurance costs. FEMA itself boasts that an elevation project "increases the value of your property." Case in point: Eleven of the 62 homes that FEMA has helped elevate in Old Greenwich, Fairfield and Westport, Conn., since the mid-2010s have been sold. Average sale price: $1.7 million. "It was a bonanza," said David Harmuth, a real estate agent in Old Greenwich. "For the homeowner, it was free money to lift their house." Some states, like North Carolina and Virginia, are reducing inequities by helping to pay for the share of expenses that isn't covered by FEMA. But most of the money has gone to whiter, wealthier communities that can better afford to hire a consultant or employee to write the grant applications. Take Scituate, Mass., which is 95 percent white, has a median household income of $128,864, and has received nearly two-thirds of the state's $9.4 million in FEMA elevation funds. The fact that Scituate has a full-time coastal resilience staffer helps "make it impossible for lower-income communities to compete," said Sarah Murdock, a former member of the Scituate Coastal Advisory Commission and head of climate resilience at the Nature Conservancy. FEMA is well aware of the disparities in its grantmaking process. The agency said last year it would start prioritizing areas with more "social vulnerability" in one of its two flood-grant programs, and started an "equity-based review" of all its grant programs. "I don't disagree with the point that you're making," FEMA Acting Associate Administrator for Resilience David Maurstad told Tom in an interview. "Do we need to see different outcomes? I think the answer is yes." Oh, one more thing: The program isn't even that effective. FEMA has spent $2 billion total to elevate 14,400 flood-prone homes since the early 1990s. Experts say that's not a great use of money, especially because it means less funding is available for projects that protect entire communities, such as installing large pumps and tunnels for flood protection and rehabilitating wetlands. Studies show those are more effective at preventing damage. "If your only metric is lowering flood damages, you're wasting dollars," said Carolyn Kousky, executive director of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Risk Center and a leading expert on flood risk. Read more from Tom here. | | | CLIMATE WINS — Shareholders of the two biggest U.S. oil and gas companies approved emissions-related proposals on Wednesday, Mike Lee and Carlos Anchondo report for POLITICO's E&E News. Exxon Mobil Corp. shareholders voted 52 percent to 48 percent in favor of a proposal to examine the company’s long-term assumptions about prices and other business criteria, in light of the need to cut climate-warming emissions. At Chevron Corp., the owners of 98 percent of the stock approved a resolution to report on the reliability of the company’s measurements of methane, a key heat-trapping gas. More from Mike and Carlos here.
| | | | DON'T MISS THE 2022 GREAT LAKES ECONOMIC FORUM: POLITICO is excited to be the exclusive media partner again at the Council of the Great Lakes Region's bi-national Great Lakes Economic Forum with co-hosts Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Lori Lightfoot. This premier, intimate networking event, taking place June 26-28 in Chicago, brings together international, national and regional leaders from business, government, academia and the nonprofit sector each year. "Powering Forward" is this year's theme, setting the stage to connect key decision-makers with thought leaders and agents of change to identify and advance solutions that will strengthen the region's competitiveness and sustainability in today's competitive climate of trade, innovation, investment, labor mobility and environmental performance. Register today. | | | | | | | | FARMING'S HOT IN DAVOS — Farming and the value of soil were hot topics at Davos' World Economic Forum this week thanks to inflation, war and sustainability concerns. Bloomberg reports : “I’ve been attending Davos for many years and I think never before has there been as great an appreciation of the importance of the farmer in the food supply chain,” Cargill CEO David MacLennan said on a conference panel. Of course, it's the head of Cargill saying it. But MacLennan did give a nod to climate-friendly farming, or the in-vogue term "regenerative agriculture," and said younger consumers would pay more for food that has a transparent supply chain. “Your soil is an asset,” he said, noting its ability to trap carbon in addition to producing food. “We have to be more conscious about how do we protect it? How do we use it as an asset and think of it just like we think of a financial asset?” OK, GEN Z — The younger jet set doesn't know who Al Gore is, our Ryan Heath notes. Overheard in a downtown Manhattan coffee shop: “I have to staff, like, this thing with Al Gore.” A dramatic pause ensues as the other person explains on the phone. “Oh, I thought he was like some scientist I didn’t need to care about.”
| | | Debra wasn't in Davos this week, but she was in the Loire Valley, where she heard some chatter about climate change possibly forcing France to adjust its notoriously rigid wine appellations. She detected no change in the quality of the Cab Franc, though. Team Sustainability is editor Greg Mott, deputy editor Debra Kahn, and reporters Lorraine Woellert and Jordan Wolman. Reach us at gmott@politico.com, dkahn@politico.com, lwoellert@politico.com and jwolman@politico.com. Want more? You can have it. Sign up for the Long Game. Four days a week and still free. That’s sustainability!
| | | — Los Angeles transportation officials have dropped a decades-old plan to expand the 710 freeway, acknowledging the need to find ways to ease traffic congestion without adding lanes to existing highways. The L.A. Times has details. — Plans to build a Great Green Wall in Africa to hold back the encroaching Sahara Desert have run up against barriers of a different kind – political and financial. The Associated Press has the story. — Ford Motor Co. is claiming a small victory in its fight to stake a claim to the EV market, beating rivals Tesla Inc. and Rivian Automotive Inc. in selling a battery-powered F-150 Lightning to a customer who vowed to buy from whoever could deliver first. Bloomberg has more. — McDonald’s shareholders rejected billionaire Carl Icahn’s plan for addressing his beef over the company’s pork supply chain, the Wall Street Journal reports. | | | | STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today. | | | | | | | | Events are listed in Eastern Time May 31 – The Washington International Trade Association holds a virtual discussion on "Russia Sanctions and the New World Trade Disorder." 10 a.m. May 31 – Washington Post Live holds a virtual discussion on inflation and antitrust with former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers. 11 a.m. June 1 – The Woodrow Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program holds a virtual discussion on "Opportunity and Risk: Mining and the Green Energy Transition." 3:30 p.m. June 2 — The Paulson Institute holds a forum on carbon capture, storage and utilization. 8 a.m. June 2 – The Treasury Department holds a virtual meeting of the Federal Advisory Committee on Insurance to discuss topics related to climate-related financial risk and the insurance sector. 12 p.m. June 2 – The Environmental and Energy Study Institute holds a virtual briefing on "Building Out Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure," part of the "Scaling Up Innovation to Drive Down Emissions." 1 p.m.
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