By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
A bill that would expand the definition of a small disaster recovery project has passed Congress and headed to the president for his signature.
Northern Missouri Congressman Sam Graves, the ranking Republican on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, sponsors the measure that should help rural communities recovering from disasters, such as from the 2019 Missouri River flood.
“This is a bill I’ve been working on for some time and what it does is it raises FEMA’s small project threshold from $139,000 to $1 million and that’s going to cover the majority of projects, what we call small projects,” Graves tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post.
Graves says several small communities suffering severe disaster damage have to wait for years to receive federal help to recover. Graves says his bill, called The Small Project Efficient and Effective Disaster (SPEED) Recovery Act (H.R. 5641) should greatly speed up the process by reducing the federal regulations required for smaller projects.
Graves says small communities will greatly benefit from the change, because small projects will receive federal approval much sooner.
“It allows them to move through much quicker,” according to Graves. “The permitting or whatever the case may be, the approval process, it moves much faster when it’s considered a small project.”
Graves says the change will not only help small communities, it will allow FEMA to focus resources on larger disaster recovery projects.
“Very happy this is going to happen finally,” Graves says. “We’re going to see some help when it comes to some of our disasters, flood disasters, in our part of the country.”