Howard County was hit hard by flooding caused by Tropical Storm Lee at the beginning of September, but do the costs constitute a disaster?
That's literally up for debate.
County officials are currently in the process of appealing a recent decision by state and federal emergency officials that the public costs the county incurred during and after the storm were insufficient for the county to receive federal relief funding, said Ryan Miller, deputy director of the county's Office of Emergency Management.
That decision excluded Howard from a statewide request for such funding that the Maryland Emergency Management Agency recently made to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Miller said.
Based on that request, President Barack Obama declared Oct. 5 that a "major disaster" exists as a result of Lee in Anne Arundel, Cecil, Charles and Prince George's counties, a move that will bring FEMA relief money to those county governments.
The declaration was for "public" assistance, which is separate from "individual" assistance granted to individuals and small business owners. A decision on individual assistance, which the county also filed for on behalf of residents, has not yet been made, Miller said.
According to Miller, counties have to reach population-based "expense thresholds" during and after a disaster in order to be eligible for public federal relief funding. For Howard, which experienced widespread flooding and saw heavy damage in historic Ellicott City and other areas such as Valley Meade, that threshold is about $1 million, he said.
Officials in every county department tallied public expenses relating to the storm, which, once compiled, calculated the county's total costs to be $1,729,684, meeting the threshold, Miller said. Officials from MEMA and FEMA also visited Howard and were given a tour of damaged areas, including Main Street in historic Ellicott City.
The report included a broad range of public expenses, such as damages to storm water systems, management ponds, roads and bridges and other structures such as the large retaining wall that collapsed in historic Ellicott City. It also included costs associated with paying county emergency personnel overtime, waiving fees at the landfill for homeowners with extensive damage and associated trash and other miscellaneous expenses, Miller said.
Some expenses ineligible
However, during a "preliminary scrubbing of the information" in the report at the MEMA level, some of Howard's expenses were deemed ineligible, dropping its overall costs below its threshold mark and prompting MEMA to forward a request for relief to FEMA that did not include Howard County, Miller said.
Miller said he does not know what items specifically were deemed ineligible, but suspects those associated with the collapsed wall in historic Ellicott City, which amounted to almost $750,000, were among them. Ed Hopkins, a MEMA spokesman, said he has also heard there is some discrepancy regarding the wall.
As part of Howard's appeal, county officials are revising and updating the list of storm-related costs they previously submitted for consideration under MEMA, and officials with FEMA are expected to visit the county in coming days to reconsider key cost items previously deemed ineligible, officials said.
"We'll gather all that data up again and file an appeal through MEMA, and hopefully we'll be successful the second time around," Miller said.
Miller said he did not have any specifics examples of newly identified damages.
Howard's appeal will be "rolled into" a broader appeal made to FEMA due within 30 days of Obama's Oct. 5 announcement, Miller said.
As for individual assistance for families and small business owners affected by Lee, Miller said the county compiled and filed with MEMA as much information as it could on damages to homes and small businesses throughout the county.
"We really have done everything we could possibly think of to bolster the case for individual assistance," he said. "We just bombarded them with as much information, both quantitative and qualitative, as we could to give the residents the best chance."
When considering individual assistance, FEMA does not work with the same kind of expense thresholds as with public assistance, Miller said.
"With public assistance, you either hit the bell or you don't," he said. "With individual assistance, it's far more qualitative. It's more, 'Tell us about the economic impact, tell us why it's going to be hard to recover, or tell us about how this community got hit hard.' "
In other words, when it comes to gauging how a storm hurt families and local shops, "It's a little bit more heartstrings-oriented," Miller said.
Miller said FEMA is not bound by any time constraints in deciding on individual assistance, and doesn't know when the decision will be made.