![]() The rail funds could eliminate Amtrak’s maintenance backlog and increase railway service areas outside the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions. These transit funds are intended to be allocated to modernizing bus and rail fleets and increasing access to communities that currently lack public transportation options. ![]() The Act also provides a major investment, of about $39 billion, for repair of public transit, and $66 billion allocation for passenger and freight rail. The investment aims to repair and rebuild the roads and bridges “with a focus on climate change mitigation, resilience, equity, and safety for all users, including cyclists and pedestrians.” The IIJA allocates about $110 billion for roads, bridges, highways, and surface transportation projects, including $40 billion of new funding for bridge repair, replacement, and rehabilitation, and around $16 billion for major projects that are too large or complex for traditional funding programs. The Act also sets aside $350 million to build wildlife corridors, to ensure animals can get under, around or over roads to migrate, mate and maintain biodiversity Physical Infrastructure Improvements The IIJA includes an assignment of over $2 billion in funding to the Departments of the Interior and Agriculture for ecosystem restoration and $1 billion for Great Lakes restoration. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) programs that help reduce flood risk and damage, and provides additional funding to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for wildfire modelling and forecasting. The Act provides financial resources for communities that are recovering from or are vulnerable to disasters, increases funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the U.S. This represents one of the largest investments in the resilience of physical and natural systems for the country. The IIJA designates over $50 billion for climate resilience in order to help communities prepare for extreme fires, floods, storms and drought-in addition to a major investment in the weatherization of homes. Key Provisions of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act Climate Resilience and Ecosystem Restoration There are several environmental and climate-related investments in the Act. After weeks of debate on amendments and tension along party lines, especially concerning what is considered “core infrastructure,” on November 5, 2021, the House approved the Act. On August 10, 2021, the Senate passed the IIJA. The agreement proposed to spend $973 billion over five years-totaling $1.2 trillion over eight years-on infrastructure projects. In June 2021, President Biden signed off on an bipartisan agreement to allocate trillions of dollars in infrastructure improvements across the country. In addition to the more-discussed funding provisions, the Act also contains substantive provisions designed to streamline the environmental permitting processes, particularly for the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) environmental reviews for “major projects” under NEPA, which includes most infrastructure projects being funded by IIJA, and amends certain NEPA streamlining provisions for infrastructure projects covered under the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act of 2015. The Act could help make significant strides towards the Biden administration’s goal of reaching 100 percent clean energy by 2035. The Act also includes a significant amount of funding amount directed by the federal government towards cleaning up pollution and funding to protect the communities against the detrimental effects of climate change. The 2,700+-page Act has been touted as providing key funding to rebuild and modernize the nation’s roads, bridges, public transportation, broadband, energy and resource infrastructure needs. ![]() On November 15, 2021, President Biden signed the landmark $1.2 trillion infrastructure legislation package, more commonly referred to as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA or Act). ![]()
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