Landslide Safety Law Underfunded as Implementation Stalls

Why It Matters

The National Landslide Preparedness Act (NLPA) was Congress's attempt to fix a longstanding gap in how the U.S. handles one of its most destructive and underappreciated natural hazards. Before the law passed, landslide mapping and monitoring was fragmented across agencies with no unified national strategy. A Congressional Research Service report updated May 14 finds that the federal government has only partially implemented a 2021 law designed to build a national framework for landslide risk reduction, and that the authorization for its core funding has already expired.

Five years later, the framework exists on paper, but in practice, key pieces remain unbuilt, funding has consistently fallen below authorized levels, and the law's appropriations authority has lapsed. Now, with Congress weighing reauthorization and the current administration signaling deep cuts to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), a federal safety mandate is losing the resources needed to meet it.

The Big Picture

The NLPA directed the Secretary of the Interior, acting through the USGS Director, to establish a National Landslide Hazards Reduction Program (NLHRP). The program was designed to identify, map, assess, research, and respond to landslide hazards in coordination with other federal agencies and state, local, territorial, and tribal entities.

Congress authorized annual funding for fiscal years 2021 through 2024 of 25 million dollars for USGS to carry out the program, 11 million dollars for the National Science Foundation (NSF) for landslide research grants, and 1 million dollars for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to support debris-flow early warning systems. An additional 40 million dollars annually was authorized for the USGS to carry out a 3D Elevation Program, known as 3DEP, which acquires high-resolution topographic data used to identify landslide hazards.

Some of the law's requirements have been met. The USGS completed a National Strategy for Landslide Loss Reduction and submitted it to Congress in January 2022. An Interagency Coordinating Committee on Landslide Hazards has met annually since 2023. An Advisory Committee on Landslides was chartered in 2024. An updated national landslide inventory map was posted online in February 2025. External grants were awarded to state agencies in fiscal years 2024 and 2025.

But the CRS report identifies significant gaps in landslide preparedness policy implementation. Landslide preparedness curricula and training modules for federal, state and local entities have not been developed. Guidelines for landslide emergency management exercises have not been created. A proposed "Landslide Ready" community recognition program, modeled on NOAA's TsunamiReady initiative, has not been established.

Early warning systems remain incomplete. The report notes that not all monitoring sites are active or collect data in real time. Post-fire debris-flow hazard assessments, a critical tool given the wildfire-landslide connection in the western United States, are only prepared for selected wildfires, not all of them.

On landslide mapping and monitoring, the 3DEP program is closer to completion. According to USGS, mapping has been predominantly completed, and the agency aims to finish a full national map by 2027. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 provided an additional 23.5 million dollars for 3DEP, available through September 30, 2031, with some of those funds still unspent.

Appropriations for the Landslide Hazards Program and the NLHRP were below authorized levels throughout fiscal years 2021 to 2024. The authorization for both NLHRP and 3DEP appropriations expired at the end of fiscal year 2024.

Political Stakes

What Congress Is Considering

Five bills in the 119th Congress would reauthorize and amend the NLPA. They are S. 1626, as passed by the Senate; S. 3923, as ordered to be reported; H.R. 2250, as reported; H.R. 3816; and H.R. 5089, as ordered to be reported.

Four of the five bills, all except H.R. 5089, would authorize 35 million dollars annually to USGS for the NLHRP through fiscal year 2030, of which not less than 10 million dollars would be dedicated to early warning systems. That represents a 10 million dollar annual increase over the original authorization.

Several amendments appear across most of the bills. They would direct the NLHRP to include tribal entities in landslide project partnerships and require the program to consider atmospheric river and other extreme precipitation events in its activities. On 3DEP, the Senate bills would extend the authorization of annual appropriations of 40 million dollars through fiscal year 2034, while the House measures would extend that authorization through fiscal year 2030.

For the Administration

The CRS report notes that appropriations have consistently fallen short of what was authorized, and the USGS has not fully implemented the NLHRP. Any further reduction in agency capacity would compound an already incomplete implementation record.

The NLPA is codified law. Its mandates do not disappear if funding shrinks. That creates a direct tension between statutory obligations and any budget trajectory that reduces USGS's capacity to carry them out, particularly for geological hazard mitigation programs that depend on sustained, multi-year investment.

For Democrats and the Public

A bipartisan law passed in 2021 is being starved of resources, and the gaps, including incomplete early warning systems and unfinished post-wildfire debris-flow assessments, carry real public safety consequences for communities in landslide-prone areas, particularly in the western United States.

The TsunamiReady model has helped communities prepare for low-frequency, high-consequence events like tsunamis. A comparable program for landslides, which occur far more frequently, does not yet exist.

The Bottom Line

Congress passed a law to build a national landslide safety framework. Five years in, the framework is partially constructed, the funding authority has lapsed, and reauthorization legislation is moving through both chambers with proposed increases attached.

The reauthorization debate is a moment for Congress to assess what the law has and has not accomplished before deciding whether to extend and expand it. The gap between what was authorized and what was appropriated, and between what was mandated and what was implemented, depends on decisions being made now in the 119th Congress, and in the administration's budget process.

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