Public media stations in rural areas say emergency alert funding is in jeopardy
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
One of the most important things public media does is alert people when there's an emergency, like an approaching hurricane or a wildfire. But public broadcasters say millions of dollars that Congress set aside to upgrade emergency alert systems are in jeopardy after the Trump administration clawed back public media funding, which could leave communities with old infrastructure as they face more extreme weather. NPR's Michael Copley reports. And we'll note that no NPR official or news executive was involved in this story.
MICHAEL COPLEY, BYLINE: When a landslide tore through Wrangell, Alaska, a couple of years ago, Cindy Sweat says people on the island were nearly cut off from information about the disaster.
CINDY SWEAT: There's one road, and everybody that lived south of that road lost everything. They lost their electricity, internet, television, phones.
COPLEY: What was left was the public broadcast from the station Sweat manages.
SWEAT: One guy said, well, I knew KSTK was going to tell me what was happening. And, of course, this was after dark. Really stormy night. He went and got in his truck and turned on the radio.
COPLEY: Months later, KSTK got a federal grant to reimburse the cost of strengthening that critical alert system. But more than a year after the funding was announced, the station has only spent about half the money. Like other public media executives, Sweat says her project was derailed by stop-work orders this year. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has been administering the program, and it sued the Federal Emergency Management Agency this spring for allegedly withholding grant money. Then Republicans in Congress voted in July to claw back public media funding. Sweat says it left a big hole in her budget, and she couldn't risk spending more on emergency alert equipment without a guarantee of being repaid.
SWEAT: When I think about this on the national scale, that all these rural stations across the United States that were counting on getting this money so that they could, you know, keep citizens safe, and now we're all across the nation unable to do that, it just puts every American in jeopardy.
COPLEY: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is winding down its operations and says if FEMA doesn't take over the grant program, more than $96 million won't be disbursed. The White House Office of Management and Budget said the program will continue funding emergency alert infrastructure. In August, FEMA invited states and tribes to apply for $40 million under the program. But with public broadcasters waiting on reimbursements for investments they've already made, they have doubts about the program's future. FEMA wouldn't comment on the record. Sweat says she hasn't heard from the agency.
SWEAT: So I don't know what happens next.
COPLEY: Thousands of miles south in Colorado, Tami Graham listened with frustration this summer as Congress debated the future of public media. Graham runs KSUT radio and said she kept hearing misstatements that...
TAMI GRAHAM: Everybody can get information anywhere from multiple sources all the time. Well, people that are saying that clearly do not live in rural America.
COPLEY: In parts of the southwest where KSUT broadcasts, the internet isn't available.
GRAHAM: If it is, it's sketchy. It comes and goes.
COPLEY: The same for cellphone service. That's why Graham says the grant funding for public broadcasters was so important.
GRAHAM: This is about emergency alerting to, you know, everyone that lives in this region.
COPLEY: She adds that critical function has nothing to do with politics or partisanship.
Michael Copley, NPR News.
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