For the past seven years, people in Goldendale, Washington, have worked to build what’s called a microgrid. It would have served as backup power at the local hospital and school district. Community leaders said the area needed the microgrid to help during long-term power outages.
Then, in April, the Trump administration stopped an infrastructure program known as the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC, program.
In 2022, the Federal Emergency Management Agency awarded Goldendale’s microgrid idea a BRIC grant. State and local matching funds would have made up the rest of the microgrid’s costs, about $17 million altogether, according to Jonathan Lewis, the director of support services at Klickitat Valley Health.
The Goldendale Emergency Preparedness Microgrid had been awarded $9.8 million from FEMA. Prior to the April announcement, the project had spent roughly $1 million coming up with construction and design plans, said Lewis.
The BRIC grant was the biggest source of funding for the microgrid. That effectively ended this large-scale project and hundreds of other projects across the country.
The microgrid project’s information has now been removed from FEMA’s website.
However, according to the images captured by the web archive service Wayback Machine, “The project ensures reliable access to essential services, reduces costs, uses nature-based solutions such as water retention and xeriscaping, and promotes community resiliency while reducing emissions.”
Whatever funds hadn’t been distributed were returned either to the Disaster Relief Fund or the U.S. Treasury, according to FEMA.
“It really feels like a betrayal,” Lewis said. “ If we thought that the federal government would pull out of all these (projects), we wouldn't have spent all this time doing all this.”
The plan went like this: The microgrid would have connected the local hospital and the Goldendale School District. They’d have carport solar panels, Tesla megapack batteries and generators. The hospital and school buildings are less than two blocks from each other.
“ We looked at some of the potential risks to our community and the power grid, especially around wildfire,” Lewis said. “As we dug into it more there, there were a lot of reasons why our little valley could lose power.”
Reasons like wildfires. Heat domes. Climate change. A cyber attack on the grid. Moreover, lots of elderly and low-income people would need help if power outages lasted too long, he said.
In addition, Lewis said, the microgrid would reduce energy costs for the rural, underserved region. He said It could also be used as a staging area for emergency response.
“Any sort of emergency planning or preparedness you do, you're hoping your system never has to work,” Lewis said. “But you're really glad if you need it.”
Lewis said the designs for a microgrid would have given the around 10,000 people the hospital district serves, “basically, indefinite power.”
“This system would get us between 40 and 90 hours of operation, and once those batteries were depleted, a generator would kick on and charge those batteries up again,” he said.
Craig Collins is with PAE consulting engineers, based in Portland. He helped design the project. The microgrid would have been a “significant benefit” for the area, he said.
“ It's exactly the type of planning and development that needs to be happening in all communities across the West, especially where there's such heightened wildfire risk these days,” Collins said.
Construction on the microgrid was expected to take eight months, Lewis said.
According to a FEMA press release, “The BRIC program was yet another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program. It was more concerned with political agendas than helping Americans affected by natural disasters.”
Those funds helped 28 projects in Washington, a majority of which supported small towns and rural communities, according to a letter from Gov. Bob Ferguson.
In the letter to agency leaders, Ferguson said canceling the program has “serious repercussions for mitigation projects across the country.” He requested that FEMA reinstate funding for four projects in Washington, including the Goldendale microgrid.
“These projects represent years of work and millions of dollars in investments from local communities. Halting them now would not only set back mitigation efforts but also place an unnecessary future burden on federal disaster assistance,” Ferguson wrote.
Other projects Ferguson requested to receive funding included a flood control project in Yakima County, relocating mobile home residents in Pierce County, and a dune restoration project in Pacific County.
The governor’s office did not respond to requests for comment. Neither did spokespeople at FEMA.
“It's really important to have these locations where communities can gather and be safe,” Collins said.
Project leaders say they don’t have enough money without federal help.
“ The appetite for coming up with money for projects like this just isn't there,” Lewis said. “Something like a microgrid is something that our community would love to have but doesn't have the means to put together.”
Without the federal funding, Collins said, they’ll still plan on building the carport solar panels, but there won’t be any ability for the panels to work during a power outage. However, he said, they plan to incorporate ways to connect to a microgrid if one ever pans out.
“ It's just a much smaller baby step than what was originally proposed or was designed,” Collins said. “In a small town like Goldendale, this might have been their only shot (at a project like this). And it's just tough to see that, that went away.”
