States throughout the West are now in line to receive hundreds of millions in federal funding for a wide variety of climate change-resistant infrastructure projects.
The funding has been announced by the Department of Transportation and takes in some 80 projects nationally that have secured up to $830 million in grant awards.
In announcing the awards, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg remarked that extreme weather events are “damaging America’s transportation infrastructure, cutting people off from getting where they need to go, and threatening to raise the cost of goods by disrupting supply chains.”
The funding includes planning grants, resilience improvement grants, funds for the enhancement of evacuation routes, and funding for the strengthening or relocation of coastal highways.
In Arizona, Coconino County is getting $15.5 million for a project designed to prepare highway infrastructure for withstanding post-wildfire flooding. The project is specific to U.S. Route 89, which slices through reservation land belonging to the Hopi and Navajo tribes.
In Colorado, Denver is getting exactly $4 million to improve roadway resiliency in the low-income neighborhood of Ruby Hill; while Aurora is slated to receive $10.8 million to reconstruct a flood-damaged intersection.
An additional Colorado project is seeing $23.8 million going to the City of Golden to control flooding in the Lena Gulch, which runs adjacent to U.S. Route 40.
New Mexico’s Dona Ana County, meanwhile, is slated to receive $2 million for a planning project focusing on transportation infrastructure vulnerabilities during an emergency weather event.
One of the largest projects nationally is seeing $56.4 million going to the replacement of the Arc of Justice Bridge in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which spans the north-to-south Cedar River. That nearly 90-year-old structure has long been regarded as deficient and will be replaced by a cable-style bridge.
By Garry Boulard
