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By Zahra Hirji and Lauren Rosenthal
The closure of the
federal government will curtail
or halt some US climate disaster preparedness
and environmental programs — and even
potentially delay real estate transactions
within the nation's flood zones.
That’s because
the major source of flood insurance for millions
of homeowners is among the non-essential
government services caught up in the shutdown,
and new policies can't be initiated while it’s
ongoing. The furloughs hitting government
offices across the country, meanwhile, are
expected to be particularly severe and extensive
at the Environmental Protection Agency.
Weather
forecasting, on the other hand, will continue
uninterrupted because of its value to public
safety. That should allow monitoring of
hurricane threats and wildfires to continue.
Here is a snapshot
of how the shutdown will affect key climate and
weather functions, as well as the potential
impact from Trump’s threat to fire workers
instead of temporary furloughs.
Flood
insurance lapses
Funding for the
National Flood Insurance Program, which provides
nearly $1.3 trillion in flood coverage for some
4.7 million policyholders, has officially
lapsed. That will have potentially significant
implications for current and prospective
homeowners.
During a shutdown,
the program is authorized to pay out claims for
existing policies for the duration of their
one-year term, at least until available funds
run out, according to the Federal Emergency
Management Agency. But NFIP can’t issue
any new policies or policy renewals.
Water lines
on a wall in a home following the flood in
Hunt, Texas, in July Photographer: Eli
Hartman/Bloomberg
Doug Quinn,
executive director of the American Policy
Association, is particularly concerned for
people whose policies are set to expire in the
coming days and weeks. Due to FEMA updating its
approach on how to calculate
premiums in recent years, he said, people
may face dramatically higher premiums when
renewals do eventually come through due to gaps
in coverage.
Funding for NFIP
has nearly lapsed many times in recent years,
with the program getting more than 30 short-term
reauthorizations since the end of fiscal year
2017. When funding ran out in June 2010, some
40,000 home sales a month were impacted,
according to the Congressional
Research Service.
EPA
hit hard by furloughs
Nearly 90% of the
EPA’s staff are being furloughed.
Unless specified as
“exempted or excepted,” EPA staff will stop
updating information on the agency’s website. In
addition, the EPA will also pause research and
publication, and stop issuing guidance,
rules and policies.
The EPA has
proposed rolling
back multiple climate programs and
regulations. That includes undoing power plant
emissions rules, rescinding the agency’s ability
to regulate greenhouse gases and ending a
program for big polluters to report their
emissions.
In response to a
question about whether EPA employees working on
those rollbacks would be furloughed, the agency
press office said in an email that the “EPA will
work to fulfill our statutory obligations,
emergency response efforts, and Administration
priorities.”
Weather
forecasts will go on
The National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will
require nearly half its current workforce to
stay on the job since they perform essential
public safety services.
If funding lapses,
the National Weather Service will continue to
provide forecasts and issue safety warnings “as
normal,” spokesperson Erica Grow Cei said in an
email Monday. That will be the case for two
tropical storms which are churning up high surf,
but aren’t
expected to make landfall in the US.
A
meteorologist monitors weather activity at
NOAA Photographer: Michael A.
McCoy/Bloomberg
NOAA also operates
a network of laboratories, as well as a fleet of
ships and planes that collect data from the
skies and at sea. The agency plans to call back
many of its research crews and discontinue
operations at several labs, with exceptions for
work that protects against “significant and
imminent threats to human life and property.”
It may take up to
24 days for NOAA’s fleet of ships to return to
the nearest port, while flight crews will have
four days to return to the agency's operations
center in Lakeland, Florida, and begin
mothballing aircraft.
At an all-hands
meeting for NOAA’s research division Tuesday,
agency leaders encouraged staff not to put
anything related to the shutdown in writing,
including in emails to colleagues and research
collaborators, according to people who attended
the meeting but were not authorized to talk
about it publicly.
Layoff
worries spread
The EPA union is
very concerned about the threat of layoffs,
which the government refers to as a reduction in
force.
“At a time when we
are facing a global climate crisis and extreme
weather events, the EPA workforce couldn’t be
more critical,” Justin Chen, president of the
agency union American Federation of Government
Employees Council 238, said in a statement. The
union called on the administration to
“immediately retract its threats to furlough and
lay off EPA workers whose livelihoods are being
held hostage.”
Unlike previous
shutdowns, the people familiar said, NOAA staff
will be able to access their email accounts
after funding lapses to check for notices
related to a potential reduction in force.
Trump has
threatened to fire “a lot” of workers, though no
agencies have explicitly
called for terminations in their shutdown
plans.
Read the full
story on Bloomberg.com.
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