After Pacifica Pier closure, Liccardo bill aims to fund disaster prevention before damage is done
The Pacifica Municipal Pier had already cracked and closed to the public before help arrived. Now, U.S. Rep. Sam Liccardo wants to make it easier for cities to get federal money for disaster preparedness efforts before coastal erosion, wildfires, floods or earthquakes push aging infrastructure to the breaking point.
The Ounce of Prevention Act would allow Community Development Block Grant funds to be used for resilience and hardening projects, helping communities prepare before disaster strikes. The dollars from the program, which are administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, are restricted for specific uses like disaster recovery. But that doesn’t include mitigation efforts.
The federal government has appropriated $22 billion of Community Development Block Grants for disaster recovery since 2020, according to HUD data. Some communities like Pacific Palisades in Southern California are still waiting on federal dollars through the Federal Emergency Management Agency after last year’s devastating wildfires.
“Local communities shouldn’t have to wait for the storm or the fire or the flood to get help from Washington,” Liccardo told the Bay Area News Group. “The current approach in D.C. is broken - having federal funding arrive only after the disaster and then only if your voters align with the presidential administration isn’t going to give any American assurance that their government has their back.”
The congressman, whose district spans parts of San Mateo and Santa Clara counties including Pacifica, said the flexibility of these funds would be critical especially for small coastal communities that “cannot muster the resources to prepare adequately for the impacts of climate change.”
The city’s decades-old pier, built in the 1970s, closed in early June after workers discovered “cracking, separation and displacement of the concrete walkway.” Officials have blamed its deterioration on a lack of funding to help preserve it. Further complicating Pacifica’s woes, the Trump administration in 2025 canceled $50 million in funding through the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program that would have helped the city with a project to address coastal erosion.
Liccardo said flexible community development block grant funding could help Pacifica with initial dollars for the engineering or design parts of a project “that are critical to put them in a position to get large grants.”
The legislation has bipartisan backing in a GOP-controlled Congress. South Carolina Republican Rep. William Timmons co-authored the bill, while Reps. Maria Salazar, R-Florida, and Jill Tokuda, D-Hawaii, signed on as co-sponsors.
Timmons serves on the House Financial Services Committee, which could consider the bill. He said in a news release that “being proactive is better for taxpayers, better for communities, and better for the people who call those communities home.”
Liccardo has focused on working across the aisle since being elected in 2024 and said that having Timmons and Salazar sign on will help the legislation move forward.
“My experience has been when you’re working with members of the majority, things happen a lot faster,” he said.
The bill has also drawn support from groups representing local governments, including the National Association of Counties and the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which Liccardo belonged to as San Jose mayor.
“Mayors don’t have the luxury of waiting until after a disaster,” U.S. Conference of Mayors president and San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said in a news release. “Our responsibility is to prepare our communities before the next emergency arrives. We know the smartest investment we can make is reducing risk before disaster strikes - not simply rebuilding after lives have been disrupted and communities have been damaged.”
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This story was originally published July 1, 2026 at 4:03 PM.