Joe Biden

FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Kicks off Infrastructure Week by Highlighting Tremendous Progress Rebuilding America's Infrastructure 18 Months In

May 12, 2023

Announced over $220 billion in funding, now over 32,000 projects across 4,500 communities across the country as part of President Biden's Investing in America agenda

Just 18 months ago, President Biden signed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law – a once-in-a-generation investment in our nation's infrastructure and competitiveness. While "Infrastructure Week" became a punchline under his predecessor, President Biden is investing in America to deliver an "infrastructure decade." As part of the President's Investing in America agenda, the Biden-Harris Administration is rebuilding our roads and bridges, replacing lead pipes to provide clean water, cleaning up legacy pollution, expanding access to affordable, high-speed internet, and ushering in a new era of clean energy.

To date, the Administration has announced over $220 billion in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding, including over 32,000 specific projects and awards, across over 4,500 communities in all 50 states, D.C., and territories. To implement the law, agencies have now hired over 5,000 federal employees, and states and territories have appointed infrastructure coordinators to facilitate clear communication and coordination with the federal government. The White House has created build.gov as a one-stop shop for information about the law and driven massive technical assistance to communities- directly from the government, as well as partners and philanthropy. The President, Vice President, Cabinet, and senior federal leaders, have taken more than 300 trips to all 50 states, as well as D.C., Puerto Rico, and the territories, to discuss this once-in-a-generation opportunity with community members. Today, the White House Infrastructure Implementation Team released a new map highlighting signature projects in all 50 states, along with a map showcasing the more than 32,000 projects and awards identified or underway.

Implementation of the President's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is a key piece of his Investing in America agenda, which is growing the economy from the bottom up and middle out – driving over $470 billion in private sector manufacturing and clean energy investments in the United States and creating good-paying jobs that don't require a four-year degree. In particular, there have been major new private sector manufacturing announcements in electric vehicle (EV) charging, EV battery, rail, buses and fiberoptic cable manufacturing spurred by infrastructure investments and our Made in America policies.

FROM BREAKING GROUND TO CUTTING RIBBONS ON MAJOR PROJECTS

Key projects are moving forward across the country – many of which had been waiting decades on the sidelines – thanks to the historic investments from the Biden-Harris Administration. This includes:

  • Brent Spence Bridge: In Cincinnati, Ohio and Covington, Kentucky, more than $1.6 billion in federal grant funds will upgrade the existing Brent Spence Bridge and build a new bridge dedicated to interstate drivers to improve traffic along I-71/I-75, a critical freight route from Canada to Florida. After years of failed promises, the project will break ground later this year.
  • Golden Gate Bridge: In San Francisco, California, more than $400 million was awarded to the Golden Gate Bridge from the competitive Bridge Investment Program to replace, retrofit and install critical structural elements to increase resiliency against earthquakes.
  • Walk Bridge: In New Haven, Connecticut, the Federal Railroad Administration will break ground this week on the Walk Bridge Replacement, which carries four tracks of the New Haven Line, utilized by Metro North and Amtrak and running between New Haven, Connecticut, and Mount Vernon, New York. The bridge is one of the oldest and most crucial bridges of the Northeast Corridor, and the new structure will enhance safety and resiliency while minimizing delays and disruptions to riders.
  • West Mission Bay Bridge: In San Diego, California, the ribbon was cut for the new 6-lane bridge with pedestrian and bike paths, safety barriers, and improved traffic signals which was funded in large part by $80 million through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
  • Frederick Douglass Tunnel: In Baltimore, Maryland, work is underway to replace the 150-year-old Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel, with Amtrak and North America's Building Trades Unions (NABTU) signing a project labor agreement and early work, such as demolition, utility relocations, and select track work set to begin later this calendar year. The project will generate up to 30,000 jobs, and the Federal Railroad Administration is currently reviewing an application for the tunnel project.
  • Boston Logan International Airport: In Boston, Massachusetts, Boston Logan International Airport was awarded $62 million as a part of the new Airport Terminal Program – the most awarded to any major U.S. airport – to fund improvements to critical roadways and Terminal E that were eliminated due to COVID-related financial constraints.
  • Orlando International Airport: In Orlando, Florida, the Orlando International Airport (MCO) has been awarded $69 million for two Terminal C expansion projects including constructing new gates and expanding their pedestrian connector bridge.
  • Fargo-Moorhead Metropolitan Area Flood Risk Management Project: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and their partners the Metro Flood Diversion Authority are accelerating efforts to complete construction of a major $2.9 billion flood risk project in the Fargo-Moorhead metropolitan area in North Dakota thanks to funding from the President's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to better protect the major health, education, cultural and commercial center from flooding.
  • Montgomery Locks and Dam: On the Upper Ohio River in Pennsylvania, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded over $857 million to construct a new lock chamber at Montgomery Locks and Dam that will allow more barges to reliably and efficiently pass through the Upper Ohio River system, relieving landside congestion and facilitating timely delivery of goods. Work is underway.
  • Diablo Canyon: The Department of Energy announced that it is providing up to $1.1 billion to prevent the closure of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant which provides up 8.6 percent of California's total electricity.
  • Arkansas Valley Conduit: The Department of the Interior is providing $100 million from the Infrastructure Law and annual appropriations to finally break ground on the Arkansas Valley Conduit, a major water infrastructure project that once completed will serve 39 southeastern Colorado communities.
  • B.F. Sisk Dam: A more than $125 million investment is supporting active construction on safety upgrades and improvements at B.F. Sisk Dam, an essential piece of infrastructure that supports water supplies for Central Valley communities.
  • Navajo Gallup Water Supply: To bring clean, reliable drinking water to Tribal communities and the city of Gallup, the Interior Department has provided $123 million to help support the Navajo Gallup Water Supply Project which is underway.
  • Mescalero Apache Tribal Bridge: The Department of Transportation and the Department of the Interior broke ground on a bridge and tunnel project in the Mescalero Apache Tribal community, that will support the local economy and serves as a main entry for Mescalero's revenue-generating businesses.

18 MONTHS OF DELIVERING INFRASTRUCTURE RESULTS

The Biden-Harris Administration has made notable progress implementing the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law across key sectors.

  • Roads & Bridges: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law makes the largest investment in roads and bridges since President Eisenhower's investment in the interstate highway system, including $40 billion for bridges alone – the largest dedicated investment in bridges ever. To date, the Biden-Harris Administration has launched over 4,600 bridge projects and begin repair on over 69,000 miles of roads. The Administration is also investing in road safety, awarding over $800 million for more than 500 projects directly to cities and counties from the Safe Streets for All program to invest in safety planning and roadway safety projects. The Department of Transportation also awarded $185 million for planning and construction for 45 projects that seek to connect communities divided by transportation infrastructure through the Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program.
  • Rail: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law invests $66 billion for passenger and freight rail, the largest investment since the inception of Amtrak and an unprecedented investment in rail safety. To date, The Biden-Harris Administration has made $9 billion available for Northeast Corridor rail projects and another $4.6 billion through the Fed-State Program to expand rail service outside of the Northeast Corridor. Ridership on the Northeast Corridor has surpassed pre-pandemic levels and service suspended during the pandemic has been fully restored an all routes. Major capital projects are underway and are meeting significant milestones, including finalizing the funding agreement for Hudson Yards concrete casing and initiating procurements for East River Tunnel, Frederick Douglass Tunnel and Susquehanna River Bridge. Through the CRISI program, FRA has advanced vital projects that enhance safety, strengthen supply chains, and get people and goods where they need to be with increased reliability. Amtrak has obligated $4.3 billion to upgrade tracks, improve rail infrastructure, and purchase a new fleet of trains. Twenty-one new locomotives have been delivered to Amtrak to date.
  • Airports: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law invests $25 billion for airports, including the first-ever funding for major airport terminals. To date, The Biden-Harris Administration has awarded nearly $2 billion in awards for the Airport Terminal Program for hundreds of airport terminal projects across 42 states. Of the first year's awards, now 70 projects are in construction. Through the Airport Investment Grants Program, the Biden-Harris Administration is funding improvements at over 3,000 airports across the country, including 600 airport infrastructure projects and over 400 pavement projects.
  • Ports and Waterways: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law invests $17 billion for ports and waterways. To date, The Biden-Harris Administration has announced nearly $4 billion in U.S. Army Corps of Engineers funding for navigation improvements at coastal ports and inland waterways – including major projects like Soo Locks, Montgomery Locks, Houston Ship Channel and Norfolk Harbor. Now, 5 major port and waterway projects are under construction with more starting in the coming weeks. The U.S. Army Corps Noyes Cut Project in Georgia was the first project completed by the Corps using Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding. The Department of Transportation has also awarded $703 million to 41 port projects across the country through DOT's Port Infrastructure Development Program (FY22), several of which will get underway in the coming months.
  • Transit: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law makes the largest investment in public transit ever at nearly $90 billion – including billions to electrify or upgrade our bus, rail, and ferry fleets. To date, the Biden-Harris Administration has funded over 3,500 clean school and transit buses through Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation. School buses built in the United States have already reached districts across the country – like the first LionC zero-emission bus funded under the program that was sent from a factory in Joliet, Illinois, to the Mount Desert Island Regional School System in Bar Harbor, Maine last December. Last year, the Department of Transportation's Low and No Emission Bus Program awarded over $1.6 billion which will double the number of clean transit buses on America's roads. Beyond helping electrify the nation's bus fleet, the Department of Transportation also funded 23 projects in 11 states to support rural, electric, and low-emission passenger ferries, including funding for both new vessels and pier and dock infrastructure in rural communities. This funding will be particularly impactful in communities throughout the Insular Areas and Alaska, where ferries are often the primary means of transportation. DOT also awarded $686 million in grants that will improve rail station accessibility for 15 grants in 9 states through the All Stations Accessibility Program, with construction at most stations now underway. Since the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed, over $7.4 billion in funding has been put to support 60 public transit projects across the country through the Capital Investment Grant Program. As part of the President's FY24 Budget, the Administration recommended 18 large transit projects in 11 states to receive $4.45 billion through the CIG program.
  • Electric Vehicle Charging, EV Batteries & Critical Materials: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law makes the largest – and first – investment in EV charging with $7.5 billion in dedicated funding. The Administration has already approved all 52 EV charging state plans and unlocked over $2 billion in funding for all 50 states and territories to install EV chargers across tens of thousands of miles of highways as well as in communities, with the goal of making electric vehicles more accessible for Americans all over the country. Since President Biden took office, the number of public charging ports has by over 40 percent. In addition, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law invests over $7 billion to support the domestic manufacturing of batteries and the extraction, refinement, and processing of the critical materials that power them. This investment, paired with the tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act will help accelerate our electric vehicle future, strengthen US supply chains, and create good-paying jobs across the country – all part of President Biden's Investing in America agenda. Last year, the Department of Energy announced that the first year of battery awards with 20 companies receiving a combined $2.8 billion to build and expand commercial-scale facilities?in 12 states to extract and process lithium, graphite and other battery materials, manufacture components, and demonstrate new approaches, including manufacturing components from recycled materials. The Federal investment will be matched by recipients to leverage a total of more than $9 billion to boost American production of clean energy technology, create good-paying jobs, and support President Biden's national goals for electric vehicles to make up half by 2030. The Law also provided $320 million to the Department of the Interior to map critical minerals, a key step in securing a reliable and sustainable supply of the critical minerals that power everything from household appliances and electronics to clean energy technologies like batteries, wind turbines and solar.
  • Clean Water: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law invested over $50 billion in water infrastructure – the largest upgrade to the nation's water infrastructure in history and the first major effort to make significant federal investments in our water infrastructure in over half a century. This funding places us on a path to replace 100% of lead service lines in America and close the wastewater gap for 2 million people who lack basic sanitation. These funds – administered by the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Water - are already helping finance drinking and wastewater projects across the country through grants and forgivable loans. EPA is providing all 50 states, territories, the District of Columbia, and Tribal water systems with funding for drinking water and wastewater improvements. So far, EPA has provided over $5.1 billion of BIL funding to states, Tribes, and territories through the long-standing and successful State Revolving Funds. This year, EPA also released allocations for nearly $8 billion in fiscal year 2023 funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law under the State Revolving Funds programs and nearly $2 billion in fiscal year 2022 and 2023 funding for the new emerging contaminants in small or disadvantaged communities program.
  • Superfunds and Brownfields Cleanup: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law invested over $5 billion for superfund and brownfield projects to restore the economic vitality of communities that have been exposed to pollution for far too long. Using this funding, the Environmental Protection Agency has eliminated the construction project backlog for the Superfund National Priority List (NPL) and launched work to begin construction on 44 of the 49 locations on the backlog list. Earlier this year, EPA also announced that it will use $1 billion to fund the cleanup of 22 new sites and expedite the cleanup of 100 ongoing existing projects across the country. EPA has also awarded grants to communities and nonprofits to assess and clean up brownfield properties and provide technical assistance to restore sites to hubs of economic growth. Among others, this funding is helping clean up water contamination sites in Indiana, an old General Motors foundry in New York State, and a landfill in Virginia – and helping environmental justice communities like a neighborhood in Atlanta that has been waiting years for funding to remove lead for the environment where children play. This cleanup work leveraged 20,000 jobs last year alone.
  • Orphan Wells and Abandoned Mine Lands: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law invests $16 billion into cleaning legacy pollution. The Department of the Interior launched three new programs to cleanup abandoned oil and gas wells on state, Tribal, private, and federal lands. In addition to launching a new program office and elevating the importance of this issue across the country, federally funded projects are already breaking ground on remediation efforts at well sites across the country. Hundreds of wells have been completely cleaned up already and the Department of the Interior expects to use federal funds to cleanup tens of thousands more wells using Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding, creating thousands of jobs reducing the harmful methane emissions from these sites in communities once dependent on the oil and gas industry to survive. The Department of the Interior also approved and deployed over $1 billion in Infrastructure Law and regular appropriations funding for the remediation of abandoned mine lands in nearly two dozen states and on Tribal lands to cleanup thousands of hazardous sites.
  • Resilience: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law invests over $50 billion in an "all hazards" approach to protect our infrastructure and communities from physical, climate, and cybersecurity-related threats. That means using investments at the Departments of the Interior and Agriculture to protect communities from the threat of wildfires by removing hazardous fuels from millions of acres of land and setting a target to remediate over 50 million acres around vulnerable communities over the next decade. The Infrastructure Law also awarded dozens of individual communities grants to develop or implement their own community wildfire defense plans in preparation for the upcoming fire season. The administration has also funded over 130 desalinization, water recycling, storage, efficiency, and other projects via the Department of the Interior to address the drought crisis in the West – including projects that when complete will conserve tens of thousands of acre feet of water in drought-stricken areas like the Colorado River Basin. The U.S. Army Corps of engineers has also funded over 800 projects across the country, including hundreds of projects to improve flood and coastal resilience like the Noyes Cut Ecosystem Restoration Project in Camden County, Georgia – the first fully BIL funded project to be completed by the Corps. In order to help communities before disaster strikes, the landmark legislation also provided FEMA with nearly $7 billion to invest in communitywide mitigation, helping to reduce disaster suffering and avoiding future disaster costs in the face of increasingly frequent and severe weather events. States have all also received initial grants to develop cybersecurity plans and procure services alongside local partners.
  • High-Speed Internet: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) invests $65 billion to help ensure that every American has access to affordable, reliable high-speed internet through a historic commitment to broadband adoption and infrastructure deployment. Since BIL's passage, the Administration has worked to streamline the portfolio of complementary programs into a two-pronged strategy that focused most specifically on affordability and access and deployment. The Affordable Connectivity Program is the centerpiece of the Administration's affordability work. Currently, 17.9 million households have enrolled in the ACP, with more enrolling every day. The FCC has allocated $100 million for paid media and grants to organizations to do ACP outreach, the first $73 million of grants of which was announced last month. On deployment, Commerce and USDA are coordinating a joint effort to announce $1.7 billion in grants for rural broadband, $1 billion for Middle Mile high-speed Internet infrastructure, and state allocations for the $42.5 billion state grant program. Commerce has also awarded 147 Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program (TBCP) grants, totaling more than $1.76 billion, and serving over 210 Tribal Governments, with additional awards expected in the coming week.
  • Tribal Communities: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law invests more than $13 billion directly to Tribal communities to provide affordable high-speed internet, safer roads and bridges, modern wastewater and sanitations systems, clean drinking water, reliable and affordable electricity, and good paying jobs. Since the Law's enactment, the Department of the Interior, in partnership with FEMA, launched a voluntary community driven relocation program, with an initial commitment of over $135 million to assist Tribal communities severely impacted by climate-related environmental threats. This program is one of the first designed to coordinate closely with community leaders to help begin the process of relocating crucial community infrastructure away from imminent threats and build long-term resilience to climate impacts.

Joseph R. Biden, FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Kicks off Infrastructure Week by Highlighting Tremendous Progress Rebuilding America's Infrastructure 18 Months In Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/361680

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