The city of Norman, Oklahoma, was prepared to build an automatic flood warning system this year — the same kind of early warning system that Kerr County, Texas, could have used to help save lives during the deadly floods over the July Fourth weekend.
But in April, the Trump administration said it was ending the “wasteful and ineffective” program that would have paid for it. The city, which dealt with flooding as recently as June, was forced to table its $313,000 project to install automated sensors and cameras to monitor water levels and provide real-time alerts to the public.
“Now we don’t have that automated system that we would very much like to have if there was funding available for it,” Tiffany Vrska, a spokesperson for the city of Norman, said of the administration pulling back the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program.