Saturday, November 13, 2021

What's in the infrastructure bill for rural America

The Rural Blog reports in some detail here, so it's a good place to start.

And here's a story from Ski-Hi News in Grand County, Colorado (Grand Junction) indicating that the infrastructure bill renewed the Secure Rural Schools Act, a significant boon to rural communities.    

I'm seeing lots of stories mentioning rural broadband.  Here's one from August, speculating about what might happen under the infrastructure bill.  I'll be on the lookout for more recent coverage post-bill passage.  

Here's a story that suggests several states with significant rural populations, e.g., Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, Vermont, the Dakotas, and West Virginia are getting more money per capita from the infrastructure bill.  (Interestingly, uber urban Washington, DC, is also in the highest per capita range).  This may look like old-fashioned pork, but it probably more accurately reflects the fact that when a road or bridge needs repairing, it needs repairing regardless of how dense or how sparse the population.  

And this story calls out how much Texas, with vast rural reaches, specially in the west, will get from the infrastructure bill, $30 billion.  

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