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Needles Council reviews draft 2025 hazard mitigation plan that could unlock FEMA grants
Summary
City staff and consultant Eric Vance presented the draft 2025 Local Hazard Mitigation Plan, identifying extreme heat, drought and flash flooding among the top local hazards and outlining a 30‑day public review period before submission to Cal OES and FEMA for approval and grant eligibility.
City staff and a consultant for Atlas Planning Solutions presented the draft 2025 Local Hazard Mitigation Plan (LHMP), a five‑year document intended to identify local hazards and make the city eligible for federal mitigation funding. "This plan is really to open the door to some potential funding sources that are not currently available when we don't have this plan approved by FEMA," said Eric Vance, the consultant who led the presentation.
Vance summarized the draft's hazard priorities, saying the planning team ranked drought, extreme heat and high winds as the top three risks and that climate change was treated as a cross‑cutting issue. He also reported results from public outreach: "We've gotten 96 responses with the online survey... approximately 42% of the respondents saying that they have been impacted by a hazard," Vance said, adding that flash flooding and extreme heat were commonly cited in the responses.
Council members asked how the plan connects to response partners. Vance and staff clarified that FEMA provides the mitigation funding, the California Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) administers grants at the state level, and that HMGP funding is tied to presidential disaster declarations while programs such as FMA and BRIC typically follow an annual cycle and notices of funding opportunity.
City staff highlighted that the LHMP is intended to make the city eligible for mitigation grant programs and to position local projects for construction funding. The presentation spelled out typical mitigation measures, from seismic retrofits and water‑infrastructure upgrades to repairs and prioritized projects for grant applications.
Next steps identified by staff: open a required 30‑day public review period on the draft plan, incorporate community feedback, send the plan for agency review to Cal OES, then submit to FEMA; staff said adoption is anticipated in late summer or early fall after federal review. The city emphasized that the LHMP is a planning tool rather than a guarantee of construction funding; projects would still require separate grant applications and approvals.
