Flood relief programs fail to deliver – With Video

May 05-- May 5--Paying off a mortgage is a significant event in the lives of most people.

When Vickie Adkins and her husband, Michael, paid off their Charmco house in January 2016 they certainly felt they had achieved a major goal. The couple began to anticipate the day that Michael could retire and started to plan for their golden years, surrounded by grandchildren.

Just six months later, on June 23, those hopes and dreams were dashed when floodwater inundated the Adkins' debt-free home, destroying a lifetime's investment.

"We were lost, more or less," Vickie told The Register-Herald last week. "We lost almost everything we had -- my husband's new truck, all the clothes except what we had on our backs when we waded out. And that doesn't even matter; there are things you can't replace, like the things that belonged to my grandmother. We didn't even think to scoop anything up because the house had never flooded before. It came up so fast."

For the past three years, the couple and one of their sons -- 46-year-old Mark, who has Down syndrome -- have lived in a used doublewide mobile home, paid for with FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) money. The doublewide is on a lot situated on a hillside off the Alta exit of I-64, and 67-year-old Vickie is afraid to drive out onto the road in the wintertime, which means that she and Mark are stuck at home unless Michael has a day off work -- his retirement plans having been shelved after 2016's losses.

The property where their previous home stood is now considered to be in the floodway -- probably in the direct path of the fastest-flowing water during the next flood. Because of that, the only relief the Adkins family could apply for was acquisition of the property from the federal Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP), which is administered by the state.

But like dozens of other Greenbrier County families, they are still waiting for the expected buyout.

"If the money would come through, we would definitely move somewhere else -- somewhere I wouldn't be afraid to drive in and out of," Vickie said. "What is the purpose for even signing up for it? I don't know if the money will ever get to us. You think maybe another year, maybe another two years."

She said she doesn't blame local officials for the delays, specifically citing Paula Brown, the Greenbrier County Homeland Security and Emergency Management official who was the point of contact for the Adkins family and others.

"Paula didn't realize it would be this long. She's as stunned as we are," Vickie said. "Paula pushes every way she can for us."

----Brown expressed her frustration with the HMGP at a Greenbrier County Commission meeting on March 26.

"We received 13 percent of what we asked for from the state," she said, noting that more than 30 homes were still awaiting demolition, posing a public health hazard as they continue to deteriorate.

Brown pointed out that the state is responsible for setting the priorities that FEMA will follow in allocating funds from the grant. While local officials and applicants were led to believe residential property acquisitions would head up the priority list for expenditure of West Virginia's $69,667,251 in HMGP allocations, someone at the state level had other ideas.

That person, who was only identified by Maj. Gen. James Hoyer -- adjutant general of the West Virginia National Guard and the man in charge of the state's various flood recovery programs -- as "the former director of the mitigation program," allegedly flipped the state's HMGP priorities on his own initiative. The flip placed residential acquisitions last in the pecking order and put infrastructure projects at the top of the list to receive funding.

According to a spreadsheet of HMGP projects compiled by Homeland Security and posted to DocumentCloud by Brad McElhinny of WV MetroNews, only 11 Greenbrier County properties have been approved for either acquisition, reconstruction or elevation, at a total cost of just over $1 million.

Also approved, the spreadsheet shows, were all seven of the back-up generators requested by municipalities or volunteer fire departments in Greenbrier County. Their total cost is $771,043.

Greenbrier County projects that are "in review," according to the spreadsheet, include water system improvements in White Sulphur Springs, a flood relief channel project proposed by the Western Greenbrier Development Corporation for Rainelle and an $11.5 million storm water project in Rainelle, as well as 14 reconstructions and nearly 30 properties in need of acquisition and demolition.

In all, the county's "in review" monetary total is a staggering $18,331,758.50. Acquisition projects that are listed as "in review" are unlikely to be funded, unless the priorities are changed.

According to Brown, 34 of the 41 applications submitted by the county for acquisitions are now listed as "oversubscribed" -- meaning those projects are beyond the funding available from the 2016 disaster declaration but have been submitted to FEMA for approval, if additional funds become available.

Brown said 70 percent of the requested acquisitions are in the floodway (like the Adkins family's property) and, thus, are not eligible for any other recovery program. Also, one entire Greenbrier project, involving six structures, is missing from the official state list.

Information provided by state Homeland Security personnel at an April 30 meeting of the Joint Legislative Committee on Flooding indicated that all of the over-subscriptions are -- like Greenbrier County's -- residential acquisitions. The total funding needed to fully pay for all of those projects is an additional $21 million.

During the interim committee's meeting last week, Delegate Kayla Kessinger (R-Fayette) warned the state's Homeland Security director, Mike Todorovich, and Hoyer that the committee's priority is "getting people in homes."

After maintaining that the state must spend "some money" on infrastructure to ensure that thousands of people would not be affected by a public water outage, Hoyer promised that he would "go back and dissect" HMGP's priorities.

Hoyer also said he would initiate a regular update on progress being made in spending HMGP funds, similar to the weekly report he already issues on the RISE program, another multi-million dollar flood recovery effort being paid for with federal grant money.

----Both HMGP and RISE are coming in for renewed federal scrutiny.

U.S. Attorney Mike Stuart's office announced to media in Charleston last week that his office is investigating West Virginia's use of federally-funded flood relief programs. The announcement came in the wake of a flurry of news articles about the state's seeming inability to spend the money in a timely fashion on the purposes for which it was intended.

At a forum in Lewisburg later in the week, Stuart confirmed his office's involvement in the probe.

"It burns me up to think that (the flood occurred) three years ago, and money is still not being spent," he said. "Somebody needs to account for that."

Stuart said his investigation would focus on three areas:

First, was the allocation of money from various federal programs sufficient to accomplish the flood recovery goals, and was appropriate oversight in place to administer the funds?

Second, what has been found in investigations of the recovery efforts thus far?

And third, in places like Richwood -- where legal charges already have been brought -- was money misspent by people in positions of trust?

"We're drawing no conclusions," Stuart emphasized. "But these are federal dollars we're talking about."

Repercussions of maladministration of the flood relief funds could include FEMA asking for its money back, Stuart said. Also at stake, he pointed out, is the potential impact on the federal government's willingness to lend a hand to West Virginia during the next natural disaster.

When RISE funding first became available for the state to use in late February 2018, the balance in the fund was $149,875,000. Thus far, the state has only managed to spend a little over $14.6 million, less than 10 percent of the total available.

As of Hoyer's weekly report on April 26, 49 homes were complete and 465 housing cases remained outstanding in the RISE program.

In addition, 18 projects were reported at that time to be in the final stages of the environmental review process for the Slum and Blight program, with another 131 projects pending in that program.

----Another Greenbrier County homeowner who is part of the long line of HMGP applicants still waiting for definitive answers is Gary Dolin. His patience with state government is at an end.

The 76-year-old man and his wife live just east of White Sulphur Springs on U.S. 60. He told The Register-Herald that all of the houses in his neighborhood took on water in the 2016 flood event.

"After the flood of 2016, FEMA came along and gave people some up-front money," Dolin said. "They looked at my house and said, 'You need $10,000 to keep from having to leave.' Well, I ended up spending $50,000 repairing my house and only got $11,500 from FEMA, after filing an appeal. I had to rebuild my house out of my own pocket."

Six or seven months later, government officials told Dolin that his home was in the floodway, meaning it would qualify for demolition and removal funding through HMGP, but no other help.

"That was in 2016, and I've heard not one word from them since," he said.

"I called (Gov.) Jim Justice's office last summer. People there told me that Gov. Justice had decided to spend that money on infrastructure instead. There wouldn't be any more buyouts and tear downs because the governor didn't want to create any more green space or hurt the tax base.

"He's the man in charge, and what he says goes."

Dolin remains convinced that flood relief money is being mismanaged.

"There's no accountability for all this money, and there's a lot of money out there," he said. "I've squawked over it and squawked over it and squawked over it, but I've quit squawking now. That's what they want you to do."

Dolin said if he had been advised in his initial encounter with FEMA that what remained of his home was in the floodway, he wouldn't have rebuilt it in the same spot. And now, he said it appears there is no funding for residential projects through HMGP.

"Basically, they say I'm just stuck with it," he said. "I can't afford to just buy another house. I'm not wealthy."

Dolin said he has a stack of letters from many of the government officials at every level whom he has contacted about his plight, but none offer a solution.

"That bunch in Charleston -- it's a good old boys' club," he said. "They do what they want to."

-- Email: talvey@register-herald.com

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