II. General Work Eligibility

Through the PA Program, FEMA provides grant funding for WORK for debris removal, emergency protective measures, permanent restoration of damaged facilities (including cost-effective hazard mitigation), and building code and floodplain management administration and enforcement activities.

A. Emergency Work vs. Permanent Work

• Emergency Work: Addresses an immediate threat and is divided into Category A (Debris removal) and Category B (Emergency protective measures).
• Permanent Work: Includes the restoration of a damaged facility or building code and floodplain management administration and enforcement activities. This is separated into Category C (Roads/bridges), Category D (Water control facilities), Category E (Buildings/equipment), Category F (Utilities), Category G (Parks, recreational, and other facilities), and Category I (Building code and floodplain management).

B. Minimum Work Eligibility Criteria

At a minimum, work must meet each of the following three general criteria to be eligible:

1. Be required as a result of the declared incident;
2. Be located within the declared area; and
3. Be the legal responsibility of an eligible applicant.

Result of Declared Incident

Sector-Specific Threat Demonstration

• Debris Removal: Applicants must demonstrate that the debris was generated by the declared incident, during the declared incident period, and that removal addresses an immediate threat.
• Emergency Protective Measures: Applicants must demonstrate that the work addresses an immediate threat resulting from the declared incident.
• Permanent Work, Temporary Repairs, and Mold Remediation: Applicants must demonstrate that the work addresses damage caused directly by the declared incident.

Incident Separation Mandates

Applicants must clearly define impacts and damage caused by the declared incident and separate them from any impacts or damage not caused by the declared incident. Applicants must also separate any work or costs associated with addressing uncaused impacts or damage.

Impacts and Damage Exclusion List

Examples of impacts or damage not caused by the declared incident include:

• Previously existing damage or debris.
• Impacts or damage resulting from a different incident, even if it occurred during the incident period of the declared incident.
• Impacts or damage that occur after the incident period and prior to conducting incident-related repairs.
• Deterioration (wear and tear) or deferred maintenance.
• Impacts or damage due to failure to take measures to protect a facility from further damage in a timely manner, or damage due to negligence.

Project Class Valuation Thresholds

• Small Projects: Applicants must certify, in lieu of providing documentation, that debris removal, emergency protective measures, and permanent work meet the explicit incident connection criteria and did not result from a lack of maintenance.
• Large Projects: If necessary to validate cause, applicants must provide pre-incident photographs/videos and/or documentation supporting the pre-disaster condition of the facility (e.g., maintenance records or inspection reports).

Complete Destruction Documentation Waiver

Inspection Waiver: Large projects do not automatically require pre-incident records if site inspections show the damage is a evident result of the event. For instance, where an entire bridge or section of road is washed away or a building is consumed by fire, maintenance records are not needed to support the overall failure caused by the event.

Protecting Tribal Sensitive Locations

Cultural Integrity Context

FEMA recognizes the importance of protecting sensitive tribal locations. Many sensitive tribal locations are sacred, and non-tribal members sharing information about or accessing these locations may be seen as a violation of tribal or federal law. Items such as pottery, jewelry, regalia, clothing, weapons, sacred objects, and human remains must be protected from theft and damage.

Sacred Site Inspection Bans & Alternative Certifications

Tribal Sovereignty Rule: For locations that are sacred to a Tribal Nation where non-tribal members are not allowed, site inspections by FEMA staff are not permitted. Instead, FEMA will accept a Tribal Nation's certified damage assessment as a valid alternative to document and validate damage. Additionally, FEMA will not require photos, site maps, and specific location details (such as GPS coordinates) for locations where tribal artifacts are located.

Within Designated Area

To be eligible, the facility must be located, and work must be performed, in a designated area defined by the incident, except for sheltering, evacuation, and Emergency Operations Center (EOC) activities. Work performed on a facility located outside of a designated area is ineligible, even if an eligible applicant is legally responsible for the work to protect a facility within the designated area.

Tribal Boundary Exceptions

Tribal Nations do not always have geographical boundaries (e.g., counties, parishes) and some have boundaries that cross state lines. Therefore, tribal declarations do not usually define specific declared geographical areas; FEMA determines eligibility based on legal responsibility and whether the work is required due to the incident.

Legal Responsibility

To be eligible, work must be the legal responsibility of the applicant requesting assistance.

• Emergency Work Jurisdiction: FEMA evaluates whether the applicant requesting assistance had jurisdiction over the area or the legal authority to conduct the work at the time of the incident.
• Permanent Work Jurisdiction: FEMA evaluates whether the applicant claiming the costs had legal responsibility for disaster-related restoration based on ownership and the terms of any written agreements.

Work Eligibility Considerations by Type of Facility

FEMA utilizes a programmatic indexing framework to govern the eligibility of public infrastructure and private nonprofit (PNP) permanent restoration. Work must correspond directly to the disaster, comply with Environmental and Historic Preservation (EHP) laws, and fulfill structural evaluation protocols.

I. Cross-Cutting Macro Eligibility Baseline

Every project application processed through the Public Assistance (PA) delivery pipeline must comply with foundational criteria across all structural shapes and scopes:

• The 50% Rule Audit: Designed as an early mathematical trigger to evaluate whether it is more cost-effective to repair or fully replace a damaged facility. It does not constitute a full calculation of final project funding outlays.
• Permanent Relocation: Allowed under Category C–G projects if a destroyed facility is subject to documented repetitive hazard losses, provided the relocation is cost-effective and approved by the Regional Administrator.
• EHP Ingestion Footprints: All structural work, including ground disturbance for vehicle staging areas, access roads, public parking lots, landscape grading, or utility trenches, must undergo clear clearance reviews.
• DRRA Section 1206 Code Enforcement: FEMA provides targeted Category I administrative resources for up to 180 days to support communities with Substantial Damage Determinations, local permitting, and National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) compliance.

II. Roads and Bridges (Category C)

A. Core Structural Components

Reimbursable road features cover paved, gravel, and dirt surfaces; bases and shoulders; roadside ditches; and cross-drain structures like culverts and low-water crossings. Reimbursable bridge features cover decking, pavement, piers, girders, abutments, slope protection, and approaches.

B. Category C Eligibility Matrix

The following guidelines govern Category C emergency clearance and permanent restoration:

1. Emergency Work (Categories A & B)

• Eligible Operations: Debris removal from the right-of-way (ROW) to eliminate immediate health threats; pushing or clearing blockages to open emergency access routes; and installing temporary access routes or bypass bridges to keep isolated areas passable.
• Explicit Exclusions: Clearing commercial debris deliberately placed on the public ROW by business owners; clearing private roads or driveways unless a single access point is blocked and impedes emergency responders; and executing emergency repairs on federal-aid highways falling under Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) jurisdiction.

2. Permanent Work (Category C)

• Eligible Operations: Full structural restoration, repair, or configuration replacement to return the road or bridge to its pre-disaster design capacity and function.
• Explicit Exclusions: Paving additional traffic lanes (unless explicitly required by a code to upgrade a single-lane bridge to two lanes); normal municipal road maintenance, pothole patching, or asphalt fatigue crack sealing; repairing disaster-caused federal-aid routes (except for Tribal Nations); and claiming projected loss of useful service life or lost toll revenue.

Technical Ingestion Rules

Hydrologic Mandates: Subrecipients must distinguish minor incident damage from wear and tear caused by traffic and rain. Replacing a culvert with a differently sized cross-drain structure requires a Hydrologic and Hydraulic (H&H) study to evaluate upstream and downstream impacts. The original date of construction is required for all affected drainage structures.

III. Water Control Facilities (Category D)

A. Core Structural Components

Applies to dams, reservoirs, levees, floodwalls, flood control channels, sediment/debris basins, stormwater retention basins, aqueducts, acequias, canals, pumping facilities, and engineered drainage channels. Stormwater facilities inside a road ROW are processed under Category C.

B. Category D Eligibility Matrix

The following guidelines govern Category D water management infrastructure:

1. Emergency Work (Categories A & B)

• Eligible Operations: Clearing vegetative or structural debris to eliminate immediate blockages; flood-fighting activities (sandbagging, pumping, levee lifting); and repairing deliberate levee breaches made by responders to de-water flooded towns.
• Explicit Exclusions: Vector or flood pumping designed to de-water open agricultural lands; general surveys (like side-scan sonar) searching for debris; emergency repairs on primary flood control works under the authority of another federal agency; and emergency repairs on secondary levees riverward of a primary levee, unless human life is endangered.

2. Permanent Work (Category D)

• Eligible Operations: Silt, muck, and debris extraction to restore the pre-disaster storage or carrying capacity of engineered, regularly maintained channels and basins. PNP irrigation networks qualify only if they provide essential water for municipal drinking supplies, public fire suppression, or electrical grid generation.
• Explicit Exclusions: Restoring natural unengineered channels, lakes, or wild shorelines; restoring PNP irrigation systems that provide water solely for agricultural purposes; permanently increasing the height or capacity of a levee or floodwall beyond its pre-disaster design; and restoring flood control works under USACE authority.

Technical Ingestion Rules

USACE Financial Limit: While the USACE holds authority to conduct active flood-fighting maneuvers during an incident, it is legally prohibited from reimbursing applicants for their local flood-fighting expenses. Subrecipients must maintain a written maintenance plan and activity logs to prove an engineered basin is regularly cleared.

IV. Buildings, Equipment, and Vehicles (Category E)

The following guidelines govern Category E structural elements, post-disaster safety tagging, and specialized mold remediation:

A. Emergency Work (Category B)

• Eligible Operations: Expeditious extraction of water, mud, and silt from eligible facilities to address immediate structural collapse threats; structural stabilization (buttressing, bracing, shoring); safety fencing; and temporary roof covering. Emergency demolition of private structures is eligible only if partial or complete collapse is imminent and directly endangers the general public.
• Explicit Exclusions: Work executed on private property without a widespread public safety threat and signed rights-of-entry; removing concrete foundations or slabs that do not present a health hazard; and removing concrete driveways or pads (except for structures within a FEMA-funded Hazard Mitigation Grant Program buyout).

B. Permanent Work (Category E)

• Eligible Operations: Structural repair or replacement of public buildings, licensed vehicles, or heavy equipment to achieve pre-disaster design, capacity, and function. This includes removing mud and silt in conjunction with restoration, and mold remediation.
• Explicit Exclusions: Funding additional space or building capacity for an expanding population, even if cited in a code; replacing elements in violation of ADA accessibility requirements if the applicant was cited prior to the incident; and restoring public housing units if Congress has appropriated emergency capital funds to HUD.

Post-Disaster Inspection Splits

• Eligible Category B & I Work: Executing safety evaluations to verify if a building is habitable for public reentry, alongside posting safe-occupancy placards and "red-tagging" hazardous facilities.
• Ineligible Inspection Work: Inspections executed to evaluate if a structure needs to be elevated or relocated, or inspections performed to ensure contractors are completing repairs according to local building codes.

Welded Steel Moment Frame Protections

Seismic Ingestion Rule: Evaluating earthquake damage on welded steel moment frames is limited strictly to determining the level of disaster-related connection failure. General preliminary assessments, detailed analytical or experimental studies, and inspections that do not locate connection damage are ineligible. Repair SOWs must comply with FEMA 352 and receive explicit advance approval before execution.

V. Facility Contents (Category E)

Contents cover furnishings, standalone machinery, consumable supplies, files, public records, specimen collections, library books, and irreplaceable museum objects.

A. Category E Contents Matrix

The following guidelines govern Category E content lines:

• Eligible Operations: Extracting and storing contents in a temporary dry space to minimize additional water damage (Category B); replacing destroyed supplies with items similar in age and capacity; re-shelving, cataloging, and re-binding library publications; and data recovery from water-damaged computer hard drives.
• Explicit Exclusions: Upgrading old equipment to new items at full cost, unless a used option is entirely unavailable; manually re-entering lost data into new computers; creating new information databases; scanning paper hard copies to create digital files; and deciphering or copying illegible photocopies.

Irreplaceable Collections Protocol

Museum Preservation Rule: Rare books, manuscripts, archives, public records, and irreplaceable art objects are eligible strictly for environmental stabilization and conservation treatment to check deterioration. Full structural replacement of a destroyed rare book or unique collection artifact is completely ineligible. Eligible replacement lines for animal specimens or active research reagents are capped at standard commercial purchase prices.

VI. Utilities (Category F)

Applies to water storage and treatment systems, power generation plants, transmission lines, distribution grids, natural gas lines, sewage collection networks, and communication towers.

A. Category F Utilities Matrix

The following guidelines govern Category F utility grids:

• Eligible Operations: Full restoration of contiguous or non-contiguous system components (substations, water lines, lift stations); electrical conductor (power line) replacement if a line section meets stretching or visual damage percentage criteria; and limited ROW clearance to gain physical access to a downed utility pole.
• Explicit Exclusions: Claiming lost utility revenue due to a system-wide shutdown; general post-disaster surveys or video inspections of non-damaged sewer lines; and short-term increased operating costs, such as the cost to purchase alternative source power from an outside grid while a plant is down.

Labor Allocation Rules

Straight-Time Restrictions: For Category F permanent work and debris removal, straight-time and overtime labor costs are fully eligible for both budgeted and unbudgeted personnel. However, for Category B emergency protective measures, straight-time labor for budgeted utility employees is completely ineligible; only their overtime can be claimed.

VII. Parks, Recreation, and Other (Category G)

Applies to mass transit railways, designed beaches, municipal parks, playgrounds, swimming pools, piers, boat docks, golf courses, ball fields, fish hatcheries, and public harbors.

A. Category G Parks Matrix

The following guidelines govern Category G open spaces:

• Eligible Operations: Reimbursing emergency stabilization under Category B; replacing grass, sod, and trees if they form an integral component of an eligible facility (such as a playground or a green sewage filtration bed); and engineered beach sand replenishment if the beach meets strict design, imported grain size, and historic renourishment program metrics.
• Explicit Exclusions: Work performed under exigent circumstances that restores the pre-disaster design and function of a facility, as this constitutes permanent work, not emergency work; replacing destroyed agricultural land, farm features, or standing commercial crops; restoring private or homeowners' association beaches and dunes; restoring unengineered natural features (cliffs, natural channels); and restoring PNP-owned parks or open recreational spaces.

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