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As communities across the southern coalfields grapple with the destruction caused by severe flooding after hours of heavy rains, the program created by West Virginia lawmakers to help prevent damage from the natural disasters sits unfunded.
And last week, days before the deadly floods, Gov. Patrick Morrisey did not ask for any funding for it in his proposed budget.
The state’s mountainous terrain and thousands of rivers and creeks — along with decades of strip mining and timbering — make West Virginia especially vulnerable to flooding. This is likely to only get worse as climate change continues to increase the risk. With an increasing frequency of floods, mitigation efforts are crucial to lessen the damage caused by them.
After decades of devastating floods, state officials drew up a flood protection plan in 2004 that proposed several actions, including suggestions on floodplain and wastewater management as well as improved building codes and flood warning systems. But it was never implemented by state agencies.
Deadly flooding in 2016 renewed efforts by West Virginia leaders to address the problem, prompting the creation of the State Resiliency Office in 2017. Lawmakers later designated a special trust fund in 2023 to help the office protect communities, especially those with low-income households, from flooding as well as implement recommendations from an updated state flood plan the office completed in June 2024.
But lawmakers have never allocated money to that fund.
Robert Martin, director of the State Resiliency Office, told a legislative committee in December 2023 that there were “probably projects right now we’d be able to execute if we had what we were looking to do either with federal or state dollars.”
In his last budget proposal as governor last year, Sen. Jim Justice asked the Legislature for $50 million for the flood resiliency fund. But as lawmakers hammered out the budget, they rejected Justice’s request, leaving the fund empty again.
As of last November, the office was still looking to secure funding.
Morrisey’s deputy press secretary did not respond to questions about why the governor did not request money for the fund or whether he would revisit the decision given the damage over the last few days.
Between 2010 and 2021, West Virginia experienced about 1,600 floods, costing $244 million in damage, according to estimates by The Pew Charitable Trusts. However, damage from smaller-scale floods is often underreported, so the actual cost may be much higher.
“There’s got to be investments put forward to help West Virginia take a proactive approach to flooding as opposed to this constant cycle of recovering from a flooding event only for the next flooding event to take place and having to recover again,” said Mathew Sanders, a disaster planning expert at Pew.
Flooding is the most expensive natural disaster in the United States. However, research has shown that every $1 invested in mitigation efforts saves an average of $6 in disaster recovery costs.
Morrisey was asked about plans for future mitigation efforts during a press briefing Tuesday. He told reporters while he eventually wants to visit the updated flood plan and make further recommendations, he’s currently focused on the “immediate short-term issues,” including getting assistance to people in need.
But West Virginians no longer have the option of waiting.
“West Virginia is experiencing such a degree of frequency and severity in their flood risk compared to what they had experienced in decades past that they don’t have the luxury anymore of choosing between focusing on recovery or mitigation and resilience,” said Sanders. “It all has to happen at the same time.”
By Tuesday, Morrisey and West Virginia’s congressional delegation had all written to President Donald Trump requesting he give the state a major disaster declaration, so the state can access federal funds for the communities hardest hit by the floods. If approved, this would be the tenth time in the last decade the state has received that declaration following catastrophic flooding.
The request comes as Trump has called for the dismantling of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and leaving states to mostly fend for themselves after disasters.
“I’d like to see the states take care of disasters,” said Trump while visiting North Carolina, which is still reeling from damage caused by Hurricane Helene, last month. “Let the state take care of the tornadoes and the hurricanes and all of the other things that happen.”
When asked about Trump’s comments regarding FEMA during Tuesday’s press briefing, Morrisey said that he wasn’t “going to get into any of those issues right now.”
Reach reporter Sarah Elbeshbishi at sarah@mountainstatespotlight.org
