Environmental groups sued the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency on Thursday in an attempt to force the agency to develop rules that could ensure that billions of dollars in disaster recovery funds are spent on renewable energy projects rather than fossil-fuel infrastructure that exacerbates climate change and makes disasters worse.
The Center for Biological Diversity and other groups said in a lawsuit filed in a Washington, D.C., federal court that FEMA is making major funding decisions after natural disasters without first developing policies to ensure the projects being funded make communities better able to withstand future storms.
The groups pointed out that FEMA missed a 2020 deadline to develop definitions for the terms “resilient” and “resiliency” as required under 2018 amendments to the Stafford Act, a U.S. disaster response law.
