New Hampshire state and local governments are receiving more than $1.4 million from the federal government to cover disaster related costs since 2019.
The funding will go towards state and local expenditures during the pandemic, as well as recovery from major flooding events stretching back seven years.
In 2019, severe storms and flooding damaged roads and other infrastructure across the state, including in Grafton County. Rain fell at rates as high as 4.75 inches per hour, according to the disaster declaration then-Gov. Chris Sununu filed, damaging more than 75 miles of roads. The 300-person town of Orange faced about half a million dollars in damages.
$566,000 is being allocated to reimburse the New Hampshire Department of Transportation for road infrastructure repairs from that storm.
A representative from DOT said reimbursements are typically submitted around six months after a project is completed, with state funds being used to cover initial costs and the federal payment going to the state’s highway fund.
The New Hampshire Division of Homeland Security & Emergency Management and the state’s transportation department are also receiving funds to cover costs incurred from flooding events in 2021, 2023 and 2024.
Delays in federal disaster aid to New Hampshire are not new, requiring local governments to front the cost of repairs, and sometimes wait years for reimbursement.
Climate change is increasing the risk of flooding in the region, as the Northeast gets warmer and wetter. Extreme precipitation events, which make up most of the federally-declared disasters in the last decade, have increased about 60% in the Northeast since the 1950s, according to the latest National Climate Assessment.
In 2021, flooding in the Monadnock region damaged roads in Jaffrey and Winchester. In 2023, the same part of Route 10 in Winchester was washed away during July flooding. The Winchester town administrator told NHPR at the time that the cost to the town to repair the damage was around $200,000.
Separately, both Manchester and Nashua are receiving $116,000 for COVID-19 management costs for things like vaccine distribution, infection testing and personal protective equipment.
Emily Martuscello leads Nashua’s Emergency Management office. She said these costs were expenditures from 2021, but various government shutdowns, like the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, which houses FEMA, delayed reimbursements.
“It's taken a long time to get all the payouts that we had submitted for,” she said.
Martuscello said the city covered those costs with assigned funds, and the money from FEMA hasn’t hit the city’s bank account.
“We have a large enough unassigned balance that we've been able to mitigate the impact of not receiving this fund,” she said. “But that is not the case for, I would say, a majority of the other communities across the state.”
