Most travelers heading to the Oregon coast on Highway 126 know Mapleton as a quiet little junction where a bridge crosses the Siuslaw. Turn onto Riverview Avenue, and there are spots along the wide, lazy river that are so smooth the water looks like glass. With so much of it everywhere, it’s kind of hard to grasp the dire water problems this unincorporated town is having.
And the loss of federal funds meant to repair its failing drinking water system has only exacerbated the situation.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration abruptly halted a bi-partisan supported program called Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities. The program is often simply referred to by its acronym: BRIC.
Administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, it provides federal funding to help states, local governments and tribes build capacity to prepare for emergencies and natural disasters.
In Oregon, $140 million in grants to approved projects have been eliminated.
Water, water everywhere but...
Art Donnelly is co-chair of the Mapleton Water District Board of Commissioners. He knows a lot about the history of drinking water troubles here.
“What’s important to remember about the Mapleton Water District is that the system debuted in 1951," Donnelly said. "Most of the infrastructure that we’re still using in terms of distribution and storage was built in those first several years.”
That means, the 11½ miles of water line laid down when Mapleton was a booming mill town are the same pipes being used today.
“Those pipes, I would liken them to the bones of an 80-year-old man," Donnelly said. "They're brittle.”
That brittleness means the pipes continue to rupture, crack and break.
“Every time one of those breaks occurs, if it's significant enough, we end up either with an outage or a boil notice,” he said.
Mapleton water outages can last for days—even months.
“It’s not just an inconvenience for the community," Donnelly said. "It's been a health and safety hazard because—remember—we're not just making the community's drinking water, we're also producing the water and sending it to the fire hydrants. So, it's fire protection that we're talking about too.”
The Sweet Creek Fire in 2020 burned several hundred acres near Mapleton. Donnelly recalled while fighting the fire, the stress on the system caused a line to rupture and then the water treatment system burned out. A natural disaster became a local water emergency.
“When you put a small under-resourced community like this into that kind of crisis mode, it's difficult to make the kind of progress it needs to make in terms of repairing and replacing that infrastructure,” he said.
Water rates in Mapleton come nowhere near covering the $24 million estimated in a master plan for infrastructure replacement. The community has under 500 residents. Right now, a household of two pays around $100 a month for water, Donnelly said.
Donnelly, who chairs the district's grant committee, insisted that strides made by the water district in the last couple years have been mainly attributed to bringing in federal dollars.
Federal grants and dashed hopes
In January of 2025, the Mapleton Water District was on its way, with approved and pending federal grants and state matching funds of nearly $4 million. One of the biggest successes was a $2.7 million FEMA-BRIC grant awarded in 2023 to purchase a 300,000-gallon water storage tank and replace lines.
Then in February came a federal funding freeze. And on April 4, a press release posted on the FEMA website announced cancellation of all BRIC grants from 2020 through 2023. The notice described the federal BRIC program as “wasteful” and “ineffective.”
Oregon’s U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore) told KLCC the termination of BRIC is damaging, especially for rural communities like Mapleton.
"They put in so much work and it’s so hard for a small community to identify a program and then write a grant—but they did it and they won it," Merkley said. "And they were on the verge of buying this tank, and then the rug is jerked out from under their feet.”
Merkley recently led an Oregon delegation of lawmakers calling for an immediate restoration of BRIC grants. The Democrat said cancellation of the funding appears to be part of a trend by the Trump administration to undermine FEMA's effectiveness and shift disaster preparedness responsibility solely to state and local governments. Merkley said BRIC grant funding was allocated by law and to cancel the program “raises questions as to whether this is an impoundment, which is an unconstitutional act.”
“This program was created during a Republican administration under Trump 1," said Merkley. "And now Trump 2 has killed it with no consultation or thoughtfulness about the importance of these projects."
Merkley said both Democrats and Republicans are lobbying the administration to restore BRIC grants.
Mapleton’s new $3.7 million water treatment plant was paid for with loans and a federal grant through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA.) Lead Plant Operator Matt Ferkey said "this treatment plant makes sure that the water flowing from Mapleton taps is 99.99999% clean. So, it’s really, really clean water!”
That makes Ferkey happy. What bothers him, however, is losing the BRIC grant money already earmarked to update the water storage and distribution system.
“It means that we don’t have a way to get this clean water to our storage tanks and therefore to our customers,” Ferkey said.
Near the water treatment plant, a crystal-clear stream flows down the mountain over moss and stones. Flowing through protected land of the Siuslaw National Forest, Berkshire Creek is the sole water source for the Mapleton Water District.
Keeping an eye on the water, Donnelly acknowledged that right now, the district does not have a clear funding path forward. He hopes the next thing to come down the pipeline will be some help.
“Water is not a political issue," he said. "Water is not a partisan issue. We all have to drink water."
Oregon FEMA-BRIC grants on chopping block
- Grants Pass Water Treatment Plant Relocation, $50 million, FEMA
- Medford Water Distribution System, $34.8 million, FEMA
- Oregon State Military management costs, $19.7 million, FEMA
- Clatsop County Tsunami Earthquake Astoria Hospital, $13.9 million, FEMA
- City of Port Orford Water Resilience Improvements, $6.6 million, FEMA
- Lane County Mapleton Water Storage, $2.7 million, FEMA
- Lane County Alderwood Looped Power Transmission to Increase Reliability and Community Resilience, $2.7 million, FEMA
- City of Portland Tree Planting for Heat Mitigation, $2 million, FEMA
- Lane County Blachly Lane Amy Hill Overhead to Underground, $1.5 million, FEMA
- Oregon Military Department management costs, $1.3 million, FEMA
- 20 other grants from FEMA and EPA total $7.5 million
