FRANKFORT, Ky. — Whether large-scale emergencies such as the devastating wildfires in Arizona, the spring tornadoes in Oklahoma or last year’s Hurricane Sandy that left much of the East Coast in shambles, or smaller occurrences such damages caused by flash flooding across much of the South, natural disasters often leave areas in need of financial assistance.

The USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) administers a program especially helpful to rural communities across the country. Its Emergency Watershed Protection Program (EWP) responds to emergencies created by natural disasters and is designed to help people and conserve natural resources by relieving imminent hazards to life and property caused by floods, fires, windstorms and other natural occurrences, according to information from the USDA.

Similar to, but not to be confused with FEMA, the EWP can be called into action even though a national emergency has not been declared. But, all projects undertaken, with the exception of the purchase of floodplain easements, must have a project sponsor, according to the USDA.

NRCS offices are located throughout all 50 states as well as the Caribbean and Pacific Islands areas. Many times they are the first call local government officials make when help is needed.

Sonya Keith, Kentucky EWP coordinator, said while most of the programs related to the NRCS are connected to helping farmers, the EWP is different in that it solely deals with damages created from natural disasters. In Kentucky most of the work related to the program is because of flooding.

“What’s so different about this program is we don’t work directly with landowners. We work with government entities such as fiscal courts and city councils,” she said. “For EWP, we’re doing a lot of stream bank stabilization to keep things like roadways or houses from falling in where a creek has eroded dramatically from a specific storm event.”

Generally speaking EWP does not work with cropland or forestland because those do not meet EWP requirements; however, another NRCS program, the Emergency Conservation Program, is available for those needs. The benefits to rural communities is great, considering many smaller events don’t qualify for larger federal emergency assistance programs and often budgets are slim.

Last month USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack announced an additional $66.8 million in EWP funds would be going to help disaster recovery efforts in 15 states that include Florida, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, New York, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Wisconsin, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, New Mexico, Ohio and Colorado.

Colorado will receive the largest portion of the funding, $19 million, because of last year’s fire season, the worst ever in that state. In addition, Oklahoma will receive separate funds to assist in its recovery efforts from spring tornadoes. The NRCS has already sent $5.6 million to states recovering from Hurricane Sandy.

Keith said the EWP is a financial assistance program that pays a portion of the money needed to assist in a particular event, with the local sponsors paying the rest. “Typically NRCS pays 75 percent of the cost of the construction and 25 percent has to come from the local resources,” she said. “There is a caveat for what is called ‘limited resource areas,’ in which three very specific criteria have to be met based on population per capita income. If those criteria are met, the federal portion is 90 percent and the local is 10 percent.”

Keith added the program is well-liked, one reason being that in-kind work is accepted in meeting the local portion of the payments. She said many counties where much of the EWP funding is focused don’t have the budgets for large payments and sometimes a portion of the work that needs to be done can be completed by local entities such as local road departments.

To be eligible for EWP, Keith said there has to be a threat to some kind of infrastructure such as bridges, roads, houses or businesses, for instance.

“We’re a technical agency, so we have engineers on staff and we actually do the engineering ourselves and then we inspect it,” she said.

“Another major advantage of EWP is that damage does not have to be under a presidentially-declared event. That’s really important because we can go in and help people in a much smaller event, more local in scale than a big major event where all the thresholds have to be met for FEMA to come in.”

Keith cited as an example sudden pop-up storms that dump a great deal of water in a short period of time. A county may suffer $400,000-$500,000 in damage – not enough to bring FEMA in but certainly enough to involve the NRCS as long as the damage total is more than local government can handle.

The agency also has state conservationists who take recommendations made by the NRCS in looking at damages to determine if they are large enough to get EWP funding.

The recent funding issued to the program will go toward various projects across Kentucky, related to events that took place in 2012. Keith said in these cases, the damages did not present immediate dangers. The NRCS does have the ability to act much quicker when the need occurs.

Keith said most local officials know their local NRCS office personnel and the EWP program has proven beneficial to those communities.

“We have a physical presence in almost every county of the state, so often the county judge executives or city council members know these people,” she said. “We can tell quickly if it’s an event that warrants requesting money to do something. We lean heavily on our field people who live and work in those communities, to give us an idea of what’s going on.”

To learn more about the NRCS in Kentucky, go to www.nrcs.usda.gov/ wps/portal/nrcs/main/ky