A $7.3B Pot of Money to Prepare Infrastructure for Climate Change

Source: Route Fifty by Daniel C. Vock

The new federal funding aims to make transportation assets, like roads, transit systems and ports more resilient to flooding, wildfires and other extreme weather and climate threats.

The Biden administration is providing states with more detail about how they can use money from the federal infrastructure law to protect people and structures from the perils of climate change, a move that’s drawing cheers from both political parties.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg highlighted the new resilience money on a trip to Utah last Friday, where he saw the aftereffects of wildfires in the state and discussed the needs for infrastructure upgrades with Utah’s Republican governor and Democratic mayors from the Salt Lake City area.

The infrastructure law provides states with $7.3 billion over five years for resilience-related transportation projects, although states can opt to use up to half of their share for other uses.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox joined the transportation secretary at the Utah Capitol. The governor praised the funding as a “bipartisan solution.” (One of the senators who negotiated the package was U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah.)