FEMA grant funds will help Renton offset about $2 million in infrastructure damage caused by winter storms back in January 2024.

The grants cover up to 87.5% of the costs associated with the storm’s damages, said Deborah Needham, the city’s emergency management director. Needham said 75% of the funds come from FEMA and 12.5% from the state. Additionally, Needham said the storm caused damage in the Honey Dew Creek area and on North 27th Place. She said the project to fix the damage at Honey Dew Creek is estimated to cost $1.3 million, and the project to fix the damage at North 27th Place is estimated to cost about $800,000. Both are rough estimates.

Needham said engineers found that the damage in the Honey Dew Creek is threatening the safety of the existing sewer interceptor access road to the sewer interceptor that was impacted by bank erosion. Additionally, she said engineers found that the damage in North 27th Place area is the deterioration of the concrete box culvert footings around the concrete weir, as well as debris built up in the stream, causing water to run up and over the culvert footings instead of in the channel.

Needham said that during the January 2024 storm, severe rainfall caused soil erosion in quite a few places, and repairs are necessary and marked as a high priority.

“So it doesn’t have to be a big disaster like the giant landslide at Oso or a major earthquake. Anything that’s an unexpected disaster that causes damages is something that if it’s big enough and causes enough damage, that can qualify for the FEMA public assistance program,” Needham said. “Most people probably think, ‘Well, it rained a lot,’ but the difference is, did it cause serious damage and very expensive damage to public infrastructure? That’s what this public assistance program is intended to help with.”

Because of the FEMA grant, Renton taxpayers will have to pay an estimated $262,500 of the overall costs to fix the $2.1 million in damage. Needham said the FEMA assistance lightens the load directly on Renton taxpayers.

“Because it’s not coming from the city funds, it’s sort of part of that FEMA risk pool. It’s coming out of the federal budget ultimately instead. So what it does is it lessens the impact on Renton or any other city that is taking advantage of this program. … If you have a major disaster in a city and you don’t get assistance for it, you’ve got to pay for the repair of those damages somehow. Then they have to decide what programs they’re going to cut,” Needham said. “Are they going to cut parks? Are they going to cut policing? Somewhere, it would hurt at the city level, and so when this is put into this larger risk pool, basically, with FEMA, it means that cities who qualify for public assistance program assistance don’t have to cut programs in order to repair the damages.”