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Amina Srna: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Producer Amina Srna filling in for Brian today. Welcome back, everyone. The climate crisis is hitting home in more ways than one. New York City, still recovering from the deadly floods of Hurricane Ida and the rising tides left by Superstorm Sandy, was counting on hundreds of millions in federal grants to shore up its most flood-prone neighborhoods. But those plans just took a gut punch. The Trump administration has put the brakes on FEMA's Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, jeopardizing over 300 million in climate resilience funding for New York City.

These are the kinds of projects that build flood barriers, upgrade storm water systems, and protect public housing from extreme weather. City officials called the move devastating. At the same time, Trump has signed a new executive order instructing the Department of Justice to stop enforcing state-level climate laws, including New York's new Climate Superfund Act, which aims to make fossil fuel companies pay for the damage their emissions have caused.

What happens when Washington pulls out of climate planning just as the waters are rising? What power do states like New York have left to fight back? Joining us now is Samantha Maldonado, senior reporter at the nonprofit newsroom, The City, who's been following and reporting on aspects of both of these stories. Samantha, welcome back to WNYC.

Samantha Maldonado: Hi. Thanks so much for having me.

Amina Srna: Let's start with the FEMA cuts. This grant program was meant to fund local infrastructure that could withstand climate-driven disasters. What was the scope of it, and why was New York City depending on it?

Samantha Maldonado: Sure. This was a federal program. It was about a billion dollars over the last four years. FEMA, just earlier this month, canceled over $800 million of that. In particular, New York City had dozens of projects that were to be funded from this money. It was, again, a competitive program. They had to apply for funding, and they would be selected by the feds on the merits of the program. These programs in New York City, the projects rather, that were being funded, they were in all five boroughs. They were meant to shore up communities against flooding from rainfall and flooding from coastal storms, just like we've experienced before from Hurricane Ida and Hurricane Sandy.

Amina Srna: These weren't abstract plans. The city had real projects already in design or were getting ready for construction, right?

Samantha Maldonado: Yes, that's exactly correct. Some of them actually had work started on them. I think about that in terms of, for instance, the Tottenville shoreline project that was meant to protect Staten Island. Some of that grant funding is up in the air. They were going to get about $20 million for that. Then there's some cloudburst projects, which are basically these constructed open space projects that are meant to carry and hold a lot of water during rainstorms, so basically, millions of gallons.

There were four of those that had funding from these grants, and two of them were really in the works. The Department of Environmental Protection at the city level had presented those plans to communities and said, "Look at what we're doing here. What do you think of this? This is the kind of protection that it will avail your neighborhoods of." Those were some of the same neighborhoods that had experienced some of the most devastating flooding during Hurricane Ida, where people died.

Amina Srna: Listeners, we want to hear from you. Have you seen flood protection projects in your neighborhood? Are you worried about what happens now that federal support is disappearing? What do you think of the idea that fossil fuel companies should pay for climate change? You can help us report this story. Call or text us now at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. Let's talk about one of those cloudburst projects you've covered. What exactly are they, and why are they so crucial in places like Queens?

Samantha Maldonado: Sure. Queens, especially inland Queens away from the waterfront, it experiences a lot of inland flooding when a rainstorm happens. This is partially because of the built environment. A lot of these neighborhoods were built on top of ponds or on top of streams. That makes them very flood-prone. Also because of their infrastructure. Sometimes they don't have trees or green spaces that catch the water, or their sewer systems are not up to snuff to be able to handle the kind of rain we've been getting and will increasingly get because of climate change.

These cloudburst projects, essentially, they could be in parks, they could be in other areas, and they're meant to look like nature or just look like part of the streetscape, but they catch millions of gallons worth of water. They hold them there so that way, the neighborhood doesn't flood, or they can convey it to a different site, so that way, slowly it can drain and not overwhelm our sewer system. The Department of Environmental Protection commissioner told me that each of the cloudburst locations that they had selected, and there were four in this case that were partially funded by these FEMA grants, each of those had over, I believe it was, 200,000 people that were affected in the area around it.

They would have had a really big impact in terms of mitigating flooding. Two of them, again, they're in design, they're in the works. The federal funding was only part of the funding, but a couple of the other ones, it's very much up in the air. If federal funding doesn't come back, will they actually come to fruition? He had told me, the commissioner had told me it's really a question of how many of these can we do. What we need as a city is to do a whole lot of them, given climate impacts and given what we've already seen, frankly, in terms of the intense rain that we're getting and the scope of the damage that we've seen.

Amina Srna: FEMA has now labeled the entire program as "wasteful and ineffective." Do you have a sense of what was behind that decision?

Samantha Maldonado: Well, this federal administration has been targeting a lot of climate-based funding, whether it's "DEI-related, environmental justice." Those are usually programs that focus on the most vulnerable communities. They've also taken pains to really go after any kind of policy or spending programs that target climate. I can't speculate on why that is. I think there's a lot of reporting there to really flesh that out.

Part of this is just this is par for the course with this administration so far. It's important to say this funding, they may have canceled the grants and they say they're wasteful and ineffective, which I think a lot of the backers would disagree with. I mean, this was a bipartisan program. It still remains to be seen whether this is-- can they legally take this away? There are groups right now, environmental groups, environmental advocates, that are calling on the state and city to file a lawsuit and see if they can claw back this funding or challenge it on legal grounds.

Amina Srna: Let's go to a caller. Dana from Long Island City. Hi, Dana. You're on WNYC.

Dana: Hi. My concern, Julie Won has tried to make a change in the zoning for light manufacturing on the Long Island City waterfront to supposedly jam in some more housing and destroy a lot of jobs by way of light manufacturing, all the things that we need to build other buildings gone. I don't know where to. It's low-lying, and it was flooded during Sandy. There was a huge mess made and destruction now still fenced off along Vernon Boulevard, which runs along the Long Island City waterfront to the East River.

There's Costco there and light manufacturing, and that's it. You cannot jam in people where there's no transportation and let them be flooded out at the first opportunity of a hurricane. It makes no sense. I just heard that unfortunate news program after you started talking about this. It made me furious.

Amina Srna: Thank you so much for calling in, Dana Smith. I don't know if you're familiar necessarily with the building projects in Long Island City per se, but do you want to talk a little bit more about the concern of the competing concerns of building housing and also on top of flood-prone [unintelligible 00:08:58]?

Samantha Maldonado: Yes. I think the caller was referencing David Brand of WNYC and Gothamist reporting on the Long Island City rezoning plans. I want to give credit to his reporting there. This is something I hear a lot as I cover development and climate around the city. The question of the wisdom and just how far can we go if we're building housing in flood-prone areas. Are we putting people in places that they're going to be vulnerable? It's a question, I think, that people in the city have been asking for years, especially since Hurricane Sandy.

I hear a lot of things about this. We have a housing crisis, and so building is one way out of that, some people say. Of course, on the other side, it's "Can we build resiliently? Can we build infrastructure and buildings that can be protected and can withstand floods?" On the other hand, why would we be putting investments in a place that is going to be gone and will be underwater or could be hit by a devastating storm in years forward? It's something that I think is an active conversation in the city. It's definitely been going one way and not the other in terms of the action that we're seeing and the housing that we're seeing built.

Amina Srna: Here is a caller that I think will bridge us from Sandy to the next piece of the story. Trump's executive order on state climate laws. Tom in Sea Bright, New Jersey. Hi, Tom, you're on WNYC.

Tom: Oh, good morning. Thanks for taking my call. I lived in Sea Bright, I still do, when Superstorm Sandy came through. It wasn't even a hurricane. It was the worst flooding that they've had here in recorded history, I think. We had 12 feet of water around the house. New Jersey has about 100 miles of coastline. Just in my area, I don't see anything that's been done since Sandy. My town of Sea Bright is still just sitting out there waiting to get flooded again. I don't know what they could do, but they really did nothing. Most of the other towns around here, I don't see anything. They built on every piece of ground. Rainwater floods communities now because there's nowhere for it to go.

I think the oil companies have covered up their complicity in this, just like the tobacco companies did decades ago. They should be forced to pay billions of dollars. I don't know what that money can do because I personally think we're beyond the tipping point. I can see the river gets higher every year. The waves are higher. There's sunny day flooding here in Sea Bright. Sue them, get as much money as you can.

I don't know what we can do. I think the glaciers are melting, the sea level is rising, the Gulf Stream is slowing down. You can go on and on. There's tornadoes in Jersey now. There's sunny day flooding through my town. Four or five times a year, the roads are closed for-- I can't figure out where it's coming from. I think it's coming up through the sandy soil. There's no waves flooding the town, but my town's not unique. I haven't seen anything really significant done to stop the flooding in my area of New Jersey, but I don't know if something can be done anyway.

Amina Srna: Tom, thank you so much from your report from on the ground in Sea Bright. Sam, Tom was calling from New Jersey, but here in New York, the state passed the Climate Superfund Act. I believe it's only the second state to do it behind Vermont. Just for folks who haven't been following or who missed the news, can you just tell us about that?

Samantha Maldonado: Sure. This is a legislation signed by Governor Kathy Hochul in December. It's essentially a polluter's-pay type of law. It charges companies that have historically polluted for their emissions that they have emitted in the past. Those are planet-warming greenhouse gases. The money that is raised is supposed to go towards climate adaptation. It's very new. It was only signed into law four months ago or so, but of course, it's embattled at the moment. The Trump administration recently signed an executive order taking aim at that program and other state programs that really try to hold polluters accountable for their emissions in order to invest in climate change adaptation.

This also had a lawsuit filed against it earlier this year by 22 states, led by West Virginia, saying that they were going to protect their industries, the oil and gas industries in particular, against these laws. Everything's sort of early. It is kind of up in the air, given all the lawsuits. Of course, its backers in the state, especially Senator Liz Krueger, who had carried the bill that led to this law. Basically, she put out a statement saying, "This is bunk." They don't have this jurisdiction, the Trump administration, to create this executive order to stop them, to stop New York from carrying this out." We're watching that. Everything is very early and up in the air.

Amina Srna: Is there any legal precedent here that you've heard people mentioning? Can a president really direct the DOJ to stop supporting enforcement of a state law?

Samantha Maldonado: I can't speak to that. I think we see a lot of this right now, given what's happening across the board, just the tension between federal rule and state rule. I think that is a question that-- I would love to ask that to a legal expert, but I can't speak to it.

Amina Srna: We'll jot it down. Here's a text referring to the quote from the government or FEMA labeling the cloudburst program as wasteful and ineffective. A listener texts, "Wasteful and ineffective are two appropriate words. How about using them to describe 20 to 80 billion a year the federal government spends to subsidize fossil fuels? Are those wasteful and ineffective?"

Another listener texts, "I live in Rockaway Beach, and I've seen how this funding has gone towards combating beach erosion by building out the rock jetties. Also, it has been used to put in many rain gardens and permeable surfaces to absorb stormwater. Sam, more of the experiential side of this. How are people interacting with these systems? I mean, is it kind of obvious that these projects are happening to some communities, or is it more of--

Samantha Maldonado: Yes, behind the scenes.

Amina Srna: More behind the scenes, yes, in the works?

Samantha Maldonado: I think it's both. I think a lot of these are in the works. Frankly, I think the reality of a lot of these infrastructure projects is they take a really, really long time. That's for many reasons. Part of it is the planning process and design process can take years. Shoring up the funding can take more years. Getting any sort of shovels in the ground is a whole other process. Then, of course, that can be met with lots of delays and changes. I think you see this.

This is not necessarily affected by the FEMA cuts, but for instance, the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project, that's the big flood barrier on the Lower East Side, essentially. That has taken years. That's one of the biggest projects that we have, and I should say, most visible projects, that we have to protect against shoreline flooding after Hurricane Sandy. It's not done, and it's been going on 13 years since Hurricane Sandy. I think people are seeing different things in their communities, for sure, to bigger and lesser extents.

Amina Srna: Let's take a call on fossil fuels and who should pay for them. Keith in Somerset County, New Jersey. Hi, Keith, you're on WNYC.

Keith: Hi. Well, basically both fossil fuel industry as well as consumers who have grown so accustomed and so loving of their 5,000 and 10,000-pound SUVs. They've even had NOVA TBS programs on how average vehicle weight has grown tremendously. Like a Honda Civic or something from the 1980s, was maybe a 2,000-pound car. A Honda Civic today is what? 4,000 pounds? That's what you're calling a small car. Those people who are buying those big heavy vehicles, those are terribly environmentally destructive. There's no good reason for them other than it's just the American fed. It started in the United States, not in Europe.

Amina Srna: Fair point, Keith. Thank you so much. Sam, do you want to weigh in on Keith's call?

Samantha Maldonado: I don't have much to say there, but yes, very interesting.

Amina Srna: Here's another text actually expressing something similar. "Yes, fossil fuel companies should pay for the damage their products are causing to the environment and human health. Not only are they culpable for the climate crisis, but also for the looming plastics disaster. They have lied to our government and to the American people about both of these catastrophes. Couple of people calling and texting in expressing similar concerns or similar support, I should say, for the Climate Superfund Act that New York has passed. Sam, let's zoom out. If this federal pullback on both funding and legal support becomes the new normal, what's at stake for New York in the next decade, in the near future?

Samantha Maldonado: Well, New York is going to be facing a lot of challenges financially given the climate crisis and also just given other kinds of, I would say, more procedural questions in terms of permitting, in terms of other kinds of support that they could rely on the federal government for in the past, it seemed, but may not be able to. The way that some city officials put it was we're going to have to figure it out.

We're going to figure out how to do this climate adaptation locally with local funds. That's a really tall order given that the federal government has provided millions and millions of dollars worth of money to New York to do these kind of projects in the past. We've sort of had the rug ripped out from under us if these funds do, in fact, get taken away.

Amina Srna: Well, we'll have to invite you back on as the story continues to develop. That's all the time we have for today. We thank our guest, Samantha Maldonado, senior reporter at The City, where she covers climate resiliency, housing, and development. Samantha, thank you so much.

Samantha Maldonado: Thank you.

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