S. 1626: National Landslide Preparedness Act Reauthorization Act of 2025

S. 1626 reauthorizes the National Landslide Preparedness Act and updates how the federal government thinks about landslide risk. The premise: landslides aren't just a slow geology problem anymore. They're increasingly set off by intense rain, flooding, erosion, drought, thawing permafrost, and retreating glaciers — conditions that can turn a hillside into a debris flow.

The money is the headline change. The program's authorization rises from $25 million to $35 million a year and runs through 2030. Within that total, at least $10 million every year is set aside specifically to purchase, deploy, and repair landslide early warning systems in high-risk areas — a dedicated stream that didn't exist before.

The bill also writes three weather terms into federal law for the first time — "atmospheric river," "atmospheric river flooding event," and "extreme precipitation event" (rain that exceeds the 5-year recurrence level for a given spot) — and ties them directly to landslide planning. The idea is to connect weather forecasting with landslide forecasting instead of treating storms and slope failures as separate problems.

On the ground, the bill expands who's at the table and where attention goes. It pulls in Indian tribes, Tribal organizations, Native Hawaiian organizations, and universities as partners, and directs the national hazards database to flag places with thin data or poor monitoring. When grants are awarded, regions that have recently lost lives to landslides move to the front of the line.

Two related water programs ride along. The bill stands up a Next Generation Water Observing System inside the U.S. Geological Survey — $30 million for fiscal year 2026 to launch 10 initial basins — and raises funding for national groundwater and streamgage monitoring to $30 million a year through 2033.