Committee awards $30 million in disaster recovery grants

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More than $30 million in disaster recovery grants has been awarded to S.C. cities and counties.

The grants were awarded by the S.C. Office of Resilience’s Disaster Recovery Office through its Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery and Mitigation steering committee at a March 9 meeting.

The committee approved $30,105,720 in grant funding for stormwater infrastructure and drainage improvements in the following areas and amounts:

• City of Charleston, $9,964,190
• City of Florence, $4,048,811
• City of Manning, $4,979,555
• City of Sumter, $4,849,725
• Georgetown County, $939,529
• Horry County, $2,476,250
• Lake City, $2,847,660

The committee also approved nearly $15 million for buyouts of repetitive loss properties in two areas: Horry County ($13,120,685) and the town of Cheraw ($1,747,680).

Later this summer, the disaster recovery office is slated to open a second round of CDBG mitigation grant applications.

CDBG disaster recovery grants are funded through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to help cities, counties and states recover from presidentially declared disasters. In 2018, Congress appropriated $12 billion in funds for mitigation activities for disasters in 2015, 2016 and 2017, and HUD allocated an additional $3.9 billion.

Mitigation is defined as activities that increase disaster resilience or eliminate the long-term risk of loss of life, injury, suffering and hardship, or damage to and loss of property from future disasters.