When a deadly landslide tore through part of Wrangell, Alaska, in 2023, there was only one place people there could go for information. "We're on an island, and there's one road, and everybody that lived south of that road lost everything — they lost their electricity, internet, television, phones," says Cindy Sweat, the general manager of KSTK, the community's public broadcaster. What was left, Sweat says, was the radio.
Months later, KSTK was awarded up to $90,000 in federal funding to improve that critical alert system. The money came from the Next Generation Warning System grant program, which Congress created in 2022 to reimburse the cost of replacing and upgrading equipment at public media stations that serve rural and tribal areas. But more than a year after KSTK's funding was announced, the station has only spent about half of the money it was awarded.
The project has been plagued by stop-work orders, Sweat says. In March, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which has been administering the program, sued the Federal Emergency Management Agency in federal court, alleging the Trump administration withheld grant funding CPB needed to pay back public media stations for investments they had made in emergency-alert systems. Then this summer, Congress clawed back public-media funding, blowing a hole in KSTK's budget. Sweat says her station can't risk spending money on the project without a guarantee it will be repaid.
"I haven't heard anything from FEMA," Sweat says. "So I don't know what happens next."
It's a similar story at public media stations across the United States. Tens of millions of dollars that Congress set aside to help broadcasters strengthen the country's emergency alert system are in jeopardy, according to public media executives, threatening to leave communities reliant on aging infrastructure as they face growing risks from extreme weather.
Between 2022 and 2024, Congress appropriated $136 million to FEMA for the Next Generation Warning System grant program. CPB has been distributing money from FEMA to public radio and television stations to pay for equipment like backup generators and new transmitters so broadcasters could reach more people. But that arrangement fell apart after Republicans in Congress voted in July to strip CPB's federal funding.
As CPB winds down its operations, the organization has said that unless FEMA takes over the grant program, $96 million that Congress allocated for fiscal years 2023 and 2024, as well as some money left over from 2022, won't be disbursed. CPB recently told public media stations that had been awarded grant funding to stop incurring new expenses, saying FEMA's "inconsistent reimbursement" in recent months had made it impossible to ensure stations would be repaid.
"At this point, it sounds like the grant program is dead in the water," Tom Yoder, programming and media director at KSJD radio in southwest Colorado, which has spent about half of its $55,000 grant, wrote in an email to NPR.
FEMA declined multiple requests to comment on the record for this story.
The Office of Management and Budget said in a statement to NPR that the Next Generation Warning System grant program will continue to fund needed infrastructure for emergency alerts and warnings. A new funding announcement FEMA posted earlier this month invited states and Native American tribes to apply for $40 million under the program.
But station executives say that because of delays caused by the Trump administration, broadcasters that have already been awarded funding are still waiting to be reimbursed for investments they made, raising doubts about how the administration will handle the program in the future.
"I think we are basically, at this point, writing off the last third of the work that we wanted to get done," says Mitch Teich, the station manager at North Country Public Radio, which had hoped to buy backup generators to continue broadcasting to rural communities in northern New York and western Vermont during power outages. The station last year was awarded almost $110,000 in emergency-alert funding.
NPR tried to contact the 44 public media organizations that were awarded up to $21.6 million from the first round of emergency-alert funding that Congress appropriated in 2022. Thirteen stations didn't respond to messages seeking comment or declined to comment. About a dozen stations, including in Alaska, South Dakota, Mississippi and Indiana, said they don't expect projects that were previously awarded grant funding to move forward.
"If I had an [emergency-alert grant] and I was midway through, I would be concerned, because it's as if there are no rules right now," says Randy Wright, executive director of the division of media properties at the University of Florida's College of Journalism and Communications.
CPB told member stations in an email that it was reviewing applications for grant funding that Congress provided in 2023 when lawmakers rescinded the organization's funding. Congress appropriated $56 million in emergency-alert grants for that year.
"FEMA needs to find some way to administer and disperse these funds that have been deemed by lawmakers as vital to our nation's emergency broadcasting infrastructure," Asia Burnett, the station manager at WKMS radio in southwest Kentucky, wrote in an email. WKMS was awarded more than $270,000 in emergency-alert funding, but the grant program was upended by reimbursement delays and stop-work orders before the station could spend any of the money. Kentucky has been hit by deadly floods this year.
America's emergency-alert system has grown fragile
The government relies on public radio and television stations, along with cable, satellite and wireless providers, to distribute emergency information. But radio and TV broadcasters are especially valuable, according to FEMA, because they often continue to operate when other communication channels aren't available.
"This is probably the most critical thing that public broadcasters do," says Tami Graham, executive director of KSUT radio in southwest Colorado, which has spent about $46,000 from a half-million dollar grant it was awarded earlier this year for backup systems to broadcast during power outages. "Obviously, the news is important and all the other local information," Graham says, "but emergency broadcasting information is absolutely at the core of our mission and what people expect from us."
However, a lot of public radio and television broadcast systems have become fragile with age.
"I don't want to say we used baling wire and shoe string and duct tape to put things up, but there are some really old pieces of equipment in various remote sites that are either on their last legs, or they're not supported by the manufacturers anymore, or the manufacturer went out of business 40 years ago," says Teich, the station manager at North Country Public Radio.
"We should see improving standards" for delivering emergency information in the U.S., Teich adds. "And something like [the warning system grant program] kind of getting back-burnered or brushed aside is just a little bit more evidence that things are eroding when it comes to serving our people in the case of an emergency."
Public media stations are waiting on reimbursements from Washington
In July, as Congress prepared to rescind CPB's federal funding, public broadcasters in Alaska relayed federal tsunami advisories to communities after a major earthquake struck off the state's coast. The broadcasters' actions that day were "a perfect example of the incredible public service these stations provide," Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican, wrote on the social media site X at the time. "They deliver local news, weather updates, and, yes, emergency alerts that save human lives."
Murkowski thanked several stations by name. Two of them, KMXT in southern Alaska and KUCB in the Aleutian Islands, had been awarded grant funding by CPB to strengthen their emergency alert systems. However, both broadcasters are still waiting to get reimbursed for investments they've made, station leaders told NPR.
It's a similar story elsewhere in the state. "I know many of the other Alaska stations are in similar positions, having been reimbursed for half of the equipment needed for a project, and no way to move forward. Or even worse, not getting reimbursed," Marley Horner, program director at KHNS public radio in southeast Alaska, wrote in an email.
Around the country, nine public media stations told NPR that they're still awaiting reimbursement for some of the money they spent under the grant program. Another 10 stations said they never started work on their projects because it wasn't certain they would be repaid. Public media executives said they received stop-work orders in recent months as CPB and FEMA fought in federal court over access to the grant funding. Lawyers for FEMA have disputed that the agency withheld money, saying in a court filing that the grant funding was subject to a new payment-review process.
"The problem has been the stop/start/stop/start work orders," Will Anderson, chief executive of Blue Ridge PBS in southwest Virginia, wrote in an email. The station was awarded about $1.1 million to replace broadcast infrastructure so it can reach more rural communities with emergency alerts. "If funds had not been frozen, this project would have already been completed," Anderson said.
A Trump administration official said funding will be distributed more quickly moving forward, because the money won't be funneled through CPB.
Stations in remote communities have been hit hardest
Those funding delays have been especially disruptive in the country's remotest communities, where radio broadcasts are often the most reliable source of emergency information. Those are also the places where public media stations have tended to rely most heavily on federal funding through CPB, which Congress eliminated.
"In addition to not completing the [emergency-alert] project, KSTK also lost more than half of our annual revenue," says Sweat, whose radio station is the only local broadcaster in Wrangell, Alaska.
In Colorado, Graham, the executive director of KSUT radio, listened with frustration as Congress debated the future of public radio. There's a "misnomer," she says, that "everybody can get information anywhere from multiple sources all the time. Well, people that are saying that clearly do not live in rural America."
In parts of the Four Corners region of the southwest, for example, "broadband and internet service is potentially not available at all," she says. "If it is, it's sketchy. It comes and goes. It's sort of checkerboard, because of the terrain and because of the remoteness. And same with cell service."
That's why the projects that public media stations had hoped to complete with FEMA grant funding were so important, Graham says. "This was critical infrastructure," she says. "This has nothing to do with partisanship or which side of the aisle you're on. This is about emergency alerting to everyone that lives in this region, regardless of their political affiliation."
Disclosure: This story was written and reported by NPR's Climate and Corporations Correspondent Michael Copley. It was edited by Senior Supervising Editor Sadie Babits and Managing Editors Vickie Walton-James and Gerald Holmes. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.
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