North Carolina and Tennessee Helene Search & Recovery, And Solutions
As SAR teams with cadaver dogs still search for missing people; other people wonder if they will ever be able to rebuild on their land based on FEMA Hazard Mitigation rules.
It looks like a scene from a war movie, but this is the border of Western North Carolina and Tennessee; a massive debris field were multiple homes were swept away for miles down the river during tropical storm Helene. Danny has been providing hot tents to everyone to keep them warm. It's really cold and the SAR team only has about two weeks remaining before the weather will prevent them from searching until next spring. Danny is still running a "search and rescue” team searching for missing people. In the debris pile, cadaver dogs have gotten hits of bodies in the debris. This is basically a grave site. Danny Wolf is organizing this fundraiser at Help Us Provide Critical Aid in NC please consider a donation to help the SAR search and rescue team efforts before the winter months set in and time runs out. Video below is from Chronicle from Olivia podcast “Bodies Still Being Pulled From Rivers: SAR Team Searches For MISSING Woman in Massive Debris Pile.”
What will happens to all the property owners who either lost their entire home or have sustained Substantial Damage (SD)? Substaintial Damage is defined when the cost to repair a structure is 50% or more of the structure's market value before the damage occurred.
HENDERSONVILLE, NC: FEMA Provides 75% of Fair Market Value, North Carolina Provides 25% of the Rest; Turns the Land Into Green Space
This is forced coercion at a time when people are financially strapped and desparate to find temporary housing. The rule applies to all 50 states whether in a coastal floodplain area or a ravine floodplain region. It's part of the federal government Hazard Mitigation Program, and the recent final FEMA 100-year floodplain rule. The problem is this flood was a 1,000-year flood.
HENDERSONVILLE, N.C. (WSPA) – North Carolina is offering to buy the homes of Hurricane Helene survivors who qualify for a FEMA-funded program as one option to move forward on the path to recovery. The program is a part of the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, which includes two more programs that can increase a homeowner’s chance to avoiding the damage associated with a 1,000-year flood. The FEMA “Hazard Mitigation Grant” program is intended to identify properties, specifically, that maybe or may not be impacted by disasters or disasters in the future. The program’s intent is to implement measures that will protect those homes or homeowners from future or current damages, said Steven McGugan, Assistant Director Emergency Management at North Carolina Department of Public Safety. North Carolina offering to buy homes affected by Helene through FEMA grant
The below video is from Leigh Brown, a North Carolina realtor who has worked with numerous homeowners that have substantial damage related to hurricane Helene explaining the NC Carolina Strategic Buyout Program, how it is funded and what happens to the land after acquisition.
FEMA should not have the final authority to decide whether you keep your property. Why don't we have a voice? All 50 states are impacted by the FEMA final rule. Leigh Brown researched what I reported on almost two months ago and the subsequent policy paper in the Beef Initiative by Bree Sagdal, Lisa Logan and myself.
FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant program is unAmerican; please share this with your lawyer friends, this is ripe for a challenge based on the recent Supreme Court Chevron ruling and a recent Washington D.C. Court of Appeals CEQ NEPA ruling. You'll need to call your federal, state and local elected officials to demand change. Federalist No. 54 by James Madison writing "In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger; and as, in the latter state, even the stronger individuals are prompted, by the uncertainty of their condition, to submit to a government which may protect the weak as well as themselves; so, in the former state, will the more powerful factions or parties be gradnally induced, by a like motive, to wish for a government which will protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful."
“Were the objection to be read by one who had not seen the mode prescribed by the Constitution for the choice of representatives, he could suppose nothing less than that some unreasonable qualification of property was annexed to the right of suffrage; or that the right of eligibility was limited to persons of particular families or fortunes; or at least that the mode prescribed by the State constitutions was in some respect or other, very grossly departed from.”
Pre-Disaster Management (PDM) Program
The cost share for the Pre-Disaster Management (PDM) program is 75% federal funding and 25% non-federal funding. Cost share for the PDM program is adjusted to 90% federal and 10% nonfederal for the following communities:
Local governments meeting the definition of small impoverished community
Federally recognized tribes meeting the definition of small impoverished community. Other natural weather threats also qualify including droughts, tornadoes, wild fires, extreme heat, winter snow storms, hurricanes, and others. How It Works; Entire NC State Residents Qualify FEMA Floodplains are not limted to coastal areas but also include Floodplains areas of land that are typically flat and adjacent to rivers or streams. They extend from the river's banks to the base of the valley and are prone to flooding during periods of high discharge. Local communities may purchase flood-prone properties, remove the buildings and maintain the land as open space. FEMA may pay 75% of acquisition cost through its Hazard Mitigation Grant Program and 25% is non-federal, meaning the property owner would ultimately be responsible for 25% of the project cost. Acquisition may be an option for a property owner whose house is in a high flood risk area and who experienced substantial flood damage.
The purchased property is deed restricted and maintained as open space in perpetuity to restore and/or conserve the natural floodplain functions. For property acquisition and structure demolition or relocation projects for the purpose of creating open space, Applicants and subapplicants must comply with Title 44 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part PART 80—PROPERTY ACQUISITION AND RELOCATION FOR OPEN SPACE. A project may not be framed in a manner that has the effect of circumventing these requirements.
SOLUTIONS
Washington D.C. District Court Strips CEQ NEPA Regulatory Authority
A Washington D.C. District Court of Appeals ruled that the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), was established to instruct agencies on NEPA compliance, does not have the power to issue regulations on other federal agencies as it has been since 1970. In Marin Audubon Society v. Federal Aviation Administration, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the Council on Environmental Quality (“CEQ”) lacks authority to issue government-wide National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) regulations.
The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) establishes the tools and instructions for federal agencies on compliance rules promulgated from the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA). The National Environmental Policy Act plays a big part in compliance and implementation of the FEMA floodplain rules through existing procedures including the President’s The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) Task Force. The CEQ Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool is then used by all other agencies when determining Environmental Impact, regulations and subsequent Federal Register final rule changes.
Supreme Court Chevron Decision Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo, 144 S. Ct. 2244, 219 L. Ed. 2d 832 (2024), Court Opinion
Article III of the Constitution assigns to the Federal Judiciary the responsibility and power to adjudicate “Cases” and “Controversies”—concrete disputes with consequences for the parties involved. The Framers appreciated that the laws judges would necessarily apply in resolving those disputes would not always be clear, but envisioned that the final “interpretation of the laws” would be “the proper and peculiar province of the courts.” The Federalist No. 78, p. 525 (A. Hamilton). As Chief Justice Marshall declared in the foundational decision of Marbury v. Madison, “[i]t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” 1 Cranch 137, 177. In the decades following Marbury , when the meaning of a statute was at issue, the judicial role was to “interpret the act of Congress, in order to ascertain the rights of the parties.” Decatur v. Paulding, 39 U.S. 497 , 14 Pet. 497 , 515 , 10 L. Ed. 559.
Chevron is overruled. Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority, as the APA requires. Careful attention to the judgment of the Executive Branch may help inform that inquiry. And when a particular statute delegates authority to an agency consistent with constitutional limits, courts must respect the delegation, while ensuring that the agency acts within it. But courts need not and under the APA may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous.
Because the D. C. and First Circuits relied on Chevron in deciding whether to uphold the Rule, their judgments are vacated, and the cases are remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
THOMAS; GORSUCH
Justice Thomas, concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion in full because it correctly concludes that Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837 , 104 S. Ct. 2778 , 81 L. Ed. 2d 694 (1984), must finally be overruled. Under Chevron, a judge was required to adopt an agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous statute, so long as the agency had a “permissible construction of the statute.” See id., at 843, 104 S. Ct. 2778 , 81 L. Ed. 2d 694 . As the Court explains, that deference does not comport with the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires judges to decide “all relevant questions of law” and “interpret constitutional and statutory provisions” when reviewing an agency action. 5 U. S. C. §706 ; see also ante, at 18-23; Baldwin v. United States, 589 U. S. ___, ___-___, 140 S. Ct. 690 , 206 L. Ed. 2d 231 (2020) (Thomas, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari) (slip op., at 4-5 ), Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo, 144 S. Ct. 2244, 219 L. Ed. 2d 832 (2024), Court Opinion
Action Steps
All citizens need to find their voice, work with your state and federal elected officials, and educate them about the agreements they have entered into with FEMA, NGOs, other agencies and councils and state they are unconstitutional based on the above Court decisions especially if they are basing their decisions on federal agency regulations that have not been properly adjucated post Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo, 144 S. Ct. 2244, 219 L. Ed. 2d 832 (2024). Current and former elected officials need to partner with local and national lawyers; file a lawsuit against the municipalities that have entered into either a Community Benefit Agreement and/or an EPA Cooperative Agreement in your municipality or region.
As James Madison stated in The Federalist Papers : No. 10 “The effect of the first difference is, on the one hand, to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Under such a regulation, it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose.”
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I sure hope we have some good lawyers who can get this under their microscopes!