2018-11-29 Letter to Ben Carson re County of Hawaii Disaster Recovery

Home

November 29, 2018 Page 2 • Our island was facing an affordable housing and homelessness crisis before the disasters, and now conditions are worse. • The County's annual operating budget is only $500M, which is a fraction of the disaster impacts and the costs of recovery. Please also understand that lava is very different from a storm or a flood. Recovery is not simply a matter of clearing roads, cleaning-up property, and restoring power. Many of our losses are permanent: • Over 8,000 acres were inundated by lava. That lava is now rock that is hundreds of feet thick in some areas and covers entire neighborhoods, farms, a school, beloved cultural sites, recreational destinations, roadways, water systems, and large portions of the electrical grid. • 700+ homes were destroyed totaling over $100M in property losses. • 3,000+ parcels were destroyed or made inaccessible, translating into $5M in annual real property tax revenue losses. • A 38 megawatt geothermal plant shut down and was isolated, resulting in the loss of 1/3 of the County's power production and half of its renewable energy portfolio. • Economic impacts are in the $100s of millions, including an unprecedented 134- day closure of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, our largest tourist attraction and economic engine. To recover, we have to mitigate the effects of future eruptions by relocating and rebuilding entire communities, making them stronger and more resilient. FEMA and SBA have been fantastic partners in recovering from the disasters. However, we need additional assistance for the very long and expensive road ahead. We need community development funds for land acquisition, redevelopment, and related infrastructure costs, which cannot be funded by FEMA programs but are ideal for the HUD CDBG-DR program. By our calculations, assuming interim State support, we need upwards of$350 million in CDBG-DR assistance to fully recover and rebuild as a more resilient community. We are told that allocations based on HUD's CDBG-DR formula are far below that amount. But we are also told that you have the discretion to consider equity and other factors when making CDBG-DR allocations. With that in mind, I am asking for your help. County of liawat i is an Equal Opportunity Provider and Employer