Sundance hit with quarter-million dollar FEMA repayment

The City of Sundance has confirmation that it will need to pay back a federal contribution made by FEMA to relocate the Cole Water Tank when it was found to be sliding off the hill in 2012. The repayment is deemed necessary because the city did not perform a National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) study on the land to which the tank was moved.

Mayor Paul Brooks and Clerk Treasurer Kathy Lenz were informed of this conclusion over lunch with Wyoming Homeland Security Director Lynn Budd and Deputy Director Leland Christensen last week.

“They want it repaid. The number they used was $225,000 and they want a repayment plan that comes to around $400 a household over eight years,” said Brooks.

The city had hoped to avoid the repayment, first appealing to FEMA and then asking the State Lands and Investments Board for assistance. These attempts all proved unsuccessful, though both Lenz and Brooks maintain there is a certain unfairness in the decision.

The core of the issue, said Brooks, is that the city believed a NEPA study was only required for public lands, not the private property that was ultimately chosen for the tank’s new site.

“We thought we were going to end up on Forest Service [land] and at that point we felt we needed a NEPA. We did not believe we needed a NEPA to go on private land,” said Brooks.

At no point did the state FEMA office correct this mistake, he said. Lenz pointed out that all pay requests were reimbursed in full and only after the documentation reached the federal office was the need for a NEPA study questioned.

“This project ended up being close to $1.2 million by the time it was done. We had lots of players in it: water development, the state, the city and the feds,” Lenz said.

“In the process of doing this, we did see an officer from the federal side – they came up and got us started – but we never saw an officer from the state.”

At that time, she explained, the state office was undergoing changes.

“Nobody ever came on site from the state,” said Lenz. “Not to say that we did do the NEPA, because we did not, but we didn’t know that we had to.”

The city has done everything it can think of to correct the mistake without the cost falling on citizens, she continued.

“I even flew on my own dime to Washington to the FEMA office so that I could ask them to explain it and they wouldn’t even let me up on the floor,” she said.

Mayor Paul Brooks stressed strongly that the blame for the situation should fall on him alone.

“Ultimately, it comes down to me at the end of the day. I am the guy who the engineers work for, I am the guy everybody works for,” he said.

“If there was a mistake, there’s nobody to blame but me. I took the job, I’m the guy who is costing you the money because a mistake was made.”

According to Lenz, the conversation with Budd and Christensen involved suggestions for the city to pay back the money. One of these was to cut Sundance’s direct distribution, which is “not a great idea”.

“The money they would like to withhold from us pays for law enforcement, pays for ambulances, pays for fire protection,” said the mayor.

“Our level of service for the people who live in this town will suffer as a result of this and that’s what we told them.”

Having been asked to come up with an alternative plan, the Sundance City Council will spend the next month considering options. While still hopeful that a legislative solution could be found with the assistance of Senator Ogden Driskill, the most likely outcome, said Brooks, is a user fee for all 700 city utility customers, which would be approximately $3.72 per user for the next eight years.