The Legislative Committee on Flooding received a report Tuesday morning from Robert Martin, director of the State Resiliency Office.
The Resiliency Office was created to work with state agencies to ensure that areas hit with natural disasters can recover in a quicker and more efficient manner.
The Resiliency Office, which also manages non-federal disaster and hazard mitigation grant funding, was reformed by the Legislature in 2023 to give the office authority over the West Virginia Disaster Recovery Fund and to create the West Virginia Flood Resiliency Trust Fund within the State Resiliency and Flood Protection Act.
Recently, the Flood Resiliency Trust Fund received a $5 million appropriation from surplus tax collections available at the end of fiscal year 2026, which ended June 30.
While the fund is quite flexible as far as types of money it can accept – including funds from federal, private and other sources – its expenditures are governed by strict statutory mandates under state code, including specific set-asides for low-income areas (50 percent) and nature-based solutions (50 percent). According to statute, 25 percent of nature-based funds must be used for acquisition, relocation assistance or floodplain restoration.
Martin told lawmakers that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has a program called “Swift Current,” which expedites federal funding to buy out properties insured by the National Flood Insurance Program that either are prone to flooding or damaged beyond repair.
Martin said he would like to have more flexibility with regard to how his fund is used.
I would like to be able to team these dollars with federal dollars that are already doing buyout programs,” Martin said. “There is not a way that I can use this money to go ahead and do floodplain restoration where those properties are being brought out. It’ll have to happen by others because of the way that the terminology is in this code.”
Martin would also like to utilize the fund to assist with relocating residents out of floodplains. Martin believes a relocation assistance program with incentives could help residents exit floodplains while also keeping them in their home base, a service not typically provided by federal programs.
“Ideally, we would be able to provide relocation assistance just like the federal government does under the Uniform Relocation Act, and we would be able to provide an incentive for those people to stay in the state, stay in their county, in an area that is out of the floodplain,” Martin said.
Martin told lawmakers the State Resiliency Office is working to obtain FEMA Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grants to help provide engineers and planners to aid all 55 counties in designing flood mitigation programs as well as a pilot program for the Sentry flood detection and early warning system.
According to Martin, the office is also developing partnerships to help obtain additional grants for flood resiliency and mitigation projects. A project with WVU Tech and Virginia Tech would create off-site prefabricated homes for displaced residents. A partnership with Marshall University would develop a Resiliency Center at the school to serve as a model for community mobilization and debris cleanup.
