With so much flooding around Houston in the past month, we already have FEMA working overtime to assist those with damages from our mid-April storms. But a recent special investigation from PBS’s Frontline and NPR, reveal the future of the agency we rely on for these spring storm floods – as well as may need again in the event of a hurricane – is in real peril. Meanwhile private insurers, who work as agents for flood coverage, still are making a sizable profit.
Noting that, “Over the last 11 years, the program has fallen billions in debt; a 2015 report from the Government Accountability Office said [FEMA] was unlikely to be able to repay the money it has borrowed from taxpayers. Worse yet, the program has been accused of waste, poor oversight and fraud.
Scientists anticipate that the U.S. will face rising tides and increasingly severe weather as the climate changes — and will therefore be more prone to disastrous floods. But Congress has repealed provisions that would have garnered more funding for the National Flood Insurance Program, and FEMA’s projected budgets get smaller, not larger, through 2021.
Can the program afford the next major disaster?” (PBS Frontline)
