Joe Biden

FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Kicks Off Infrastructure Week by Highlighting Historic Results Spurred by President Biden's Investing in America Agenda

May 13, 2024

Administration releases updated map showcasing 56,000 infrastructure projects and unveils new Investing in America state-by-state fact sheets

When President Biden signed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in November 2021, he committed to delivering once-in-a-generation investments to rebuild America's infrastructure and competitiveness. Today, his Administration is cutting ribbons and breaking ground on projects across the country to rebuild our roads and bridges, deliver clean and safe water, tackle legacy pollution, expand access to high-speed internet, and build a clean energy economy for all Americans. While "Infrastructure Week" became an empty punchline during the prior Administration, President Biden is delivering an "Infrastructure Decade" that will benefit communities for generations to come. As this year's Infrastructure Week kicks off, the Administration celebrates the historic progress of President Biden's Investing in America agenda, which continues to unlock economic opportunity, create good-paying jobs, boost domestic manufacturing, strengthen supply chains, and grow the economy from the middle out and the bottom up.

To date, the Administration has announced nearly $454 billion in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding, including over 56,000 specific projects and awards, across over 4,500 communities in all 50 states, D.C., the territories, and for Tribes. To highlight the wide-ranging impact of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the White House has released an updated map showcasing the more than 56,000 projects and awards that are identified or now underway.

Today, the Administration is also highlighting progress across President Biden's entire Investing in America agenda — which includes the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, the American Rescue Plan, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The President's agenda has driven over $866 billion dollars in private sector manufacturing and clean energy investments in the United States, and the Administration is releasing new state by state fact sheets that spotlight investments and projects in all 50 states, the territories, and Washington DC.

This Infrastructure Week, the Administration also continues to call on Republicans in Congress to extend funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program, a Bipartisan Infrastructure Law program that has lowered internet bills to enable more than 23 million households—1 in 6 households across the country—to access affordable high-speed internet. Without action from Congress, millions of Americans will see their internet bills increase or lose internet access at the end of May.

HISTORIC PROGRESS ON INFRASTRUCTURE: BY THE NUMBERS

Thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law alone, the Administration has already:

  • Launched improvements on over 165,000 miles of roads and launched over 9,400 bridge repair projects – making our roadways safer and reconnecting communities across the country;
  • Provided funding to deploy nearly 3,000 low-and zero-emission American-made transit buses and funded over 5,000 clean school buses in 600 communities across the country, prioritizing disadvantaged areas;
  • Delivered funding for over 450 port and waterway projects to strengthen supply chains, speed up the movement of goods, lower costs, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions;
  • Deployed investments in over 300 airport terminal projects to modernize and expand terminals—over 100 of which are under construction or complete;
  • Launched over 4,100 projects to help communities build resilience to threats such as the impacts of climate change and cyber-attacks;
  • Financed over 1,400 drinking water and wastewater projects across the country;
  • Deployed funding that will help replace up to 1.7 million toxic lead pipes;
  • Removed hazardous fuel material from nearly 15 million acres of land through the Infrastructure Law and other sources to protect communities from wildfires;
  • Funded nearly 500 projects for water recycling, storage, conservation, desalination, and other purposes to improve drought resilience across the West;
  • Provided funding to over 200 states, Tribes, and territories and launched over 60 projects to improve the resilience and reliability of America's electric grid and deliver cheaper and cleaner electricity—representing the largest single investment in electric transmission and distribution infrastructure in the history of the United States;
  • Enabled over 23 million low-income households to access free or discounted high-speed internet service through the Affordable Connectivity Program;
  • Funded 12,000 miles of middle-mile high-speed internet infrastructure across 370 counties, promoting the security, resilience, and affordability of our nation's regional networks;
  • Provided funding to more than 280 Tribal governments to connect over 65,000 Tribal households with high-speed internet;
  • Implemented new rules to expose internet junk fees, enabling 300 million Americans to shop for home and mobile internet plans that best meet their needs and budget;
  • Plugged nearly 8,000 orphaned oil and gas wells to address legacy pollution;
  • Allocated funding to 95 previously unfunded Superfund site projects, including the longstanding backlog of projects, to clean up contaminated sites and advance environmental justice; and
  • Provided funding to 180 programs that advance President Biden's Justice40 Initiative, which set a goal that 40% of the overall benefits of certain federal clean energy, climate, and other investments flow to disadvantaged communities.

To highlight this progress and to connect with communities across the country, senior White House officials and members of the President's Cabinet have made over 500 trips to underscore how the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is delivering for communities across the country.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS ACROSS KEY SECTORS

As we celebrate "Infrastructure Week," the Biden-Harris Administration is highlighting its progress implementing the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law across key sectors:

  • Roads & Bridges: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law invests over $300 billion in repairing and rebuilding America's roads and bridges – the largest investment since President Eisenhower's investment in the interstate highway system. This funding is already improving safety, strengthening supply chains, and reconnecting communities across the country. To date, the Biden-Harris Administration has launched nearly 13,000 bridge repair projects and funded improvements on over 257,000 miles of roads. After signing the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in 2021, President Biden visited the Blatnik Bridge in Superior, Wisconsin, and Duluth, Minnesota, highlighting the kinds of aging infrastructure his Administration sought to rebuild. This January, the President returned to Wisconsin to show the effect of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law: over $1 billion was awarded to rebuild the Blatnik Bridge, a key corridor connecting the Twin Ports, to accommodate heavier trucks and bikers and pedestrians. To date, the Biden-Harris Administration has also announced over $3.5 billion to reconnect and rebuild disadvantaged communities that were divided by transportation infrastructure decades ago and have long been overlooked. These projects include "The Stitch" in Atlanta, Georgia, which received $158 million to create a 14-acre mixed-use development cap in the Downtown Connector. This investment is reconnecting working-class homes and businesses to downtown, increasing access to jobs, housing, education, and healthcare and creating public parks, plazas, and surface streets for walking and biking.
  • Rail: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law invests $66 billion for rail, the largest investment in passenger rail since the inception of Amtrak and an unprecedented investment in rail safety. President Biden recently announced $16.4 billion for 25 passenger rail projects on the Northeast Corridor to repair aging infrastructure, reducing delays and improving reliability and speed. President Biden has also announced $8.2 billion in new funding for 10 major passenger rail projects across the country, including the Brightline West High-Speed Rail Project that broke ground in April 2024. Connecting Las Vegas, Nevada, and Rancho Cucamonga, California, this project will result in a trip time of just over 2 hours, which is nearly twice as fast as driving. Brightline's agreement with California and the Southern Nevada Building Trades will ensure that the Brightline West project is built using good-paying union labor.
  • Airports: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law invests $25 billion to modernize and upgrade airports and air traffic facilities nationwide, improving passenger experience through expanding capacity, increasing accessibility, reducing delays, and enhancing safety. To date, the Biden-Harris Administration has announced nearly $15 billion in airport funding through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. This includes nearly $3 billion through the Airport Terminals Program to over 300 airport terminal projects across 48 states, Puerto Rico and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. Of these awards, over 100 projects are now underway or complete — like the Missoula Montana Airport South Concourse project, which is already complete and is increasing capacity, accessibility, and energy efficiency thanks to a $17 million investment, and the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, which received a $20 million grant and a visit from the Second Gentleman during the 2024 Investing in America Tour. Additionally, through the Airport Infrastructure Grants Program, the Biden-Harris Administration has announced over 1,000 grants for airport pavement projects. Of those, over 600 projects are already complete.
  • Ports and Waterways: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law invests $17 billion to upgrade our nation's ports and waterways. The Department of Transportation and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have together funded over 450 port and waterway projects to strengthen supply chain reliability, speed up the movement of goods, reduce costs, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This includes major projects like the Louisiana International Terminal Project, which received $300 million in funding to construct a new container terminal on the Gulf Coast for the Port of New Orleans. The new terminal will be a new alternative for larger vessels compared to inland terminals that have height restrictions, increasing throughput of goods. In April, the Army Corps broke ground on phase 2 of the Norfolk Harbor Deepening project, which received $142 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to make the Port of Virginia the deepest port on the East Coast, allowing the port to handle the world's largest container ships.
  • Transit and School Buses: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law invests nearly $90 billion in public transit – the largest investment in transit in our Nation's history. To date, the Biden-Harris Administration has funded nearly 3,000 low- and zero- emission transit buses through the Department of Transportation and over 5,000 clean school buses through the Environmental Protection Agency. The Administration is also funding long-awaited capital projects through the Capital Investment Grant program – like the Phoenix Northwest Extension Light Rail project, which received $158 million to extend Phoenix's light rail by 1.5 miles and connect it with new housing and retail space. This extension, estimated to serve 2 million passengers per year, was completed earlier this year.
  • Electric Vehicle Charging, EV Batteries & Critical Materials: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law makes the first-ever dedicated federal investment in EV charging, with $7.5 billion in available funding. Thanks to this investment and the President's vision for a national network of EV chargers, the number of publicly available charging ports on America's roads has surpassed 182,000, over a 90% increase since President Biden took office. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law also invests over $7 billion to support the domestic manufacturing of batteries and the extraction, refinement, and processing of the critical materials that power them. Of this funding, $3.5 billion has been announced to date, and already five manufacturing plants have broken ground. Late last year, the Department of Energy made an additional $3 billion in funding available.
  • Clean Water: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law invests over $50 billion government-wide for the largest upgrade to the nation's water infrastructure in history. This funding places us on a path to meet the President's commitment to replace every toxic lead pipe in America and works to close the wastewater gap for 2 million people who lack basic sanitation. These funds have already financed over 1,400 drinking water and wastewater projects across the country, including over 800 projects that will deliver clean water for Tribal communities that lack basic water services. Within this total, the Environmental Protection Agency's State Revolving Funds require that at least 49% of funding for clean water and lead pipe replacement go to disadvantaged communities as grants and forgivable loans, advancing the President's Justice40 initiative. This month, President Biden visited Wilmington, North Carolina, to announce another $3 billion to replace lead pipes, part of a historic $15 billion in dedicated funding for lead pipe replacement. To date, the Administration has deployed funding that will help replace up to 1.7 million toxic lead pipes. That includes Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which has received $42 million to replace lead pipes, putting the city on track to replace every lead pipe by 2026. Major clean water projects under construction include the Lewis & Clark Rural Water System, which is building over 300 miles of water pipeline to deliver clean water to over 350,000 people in rural Minnesota, South Dakota, and Iowa. The Department of the Interior has been able to accelerate completion of the project by a decade thanks to $142 million from the Infrastructure Law.
  • High-Speed Internet: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law invests $65 billion to help ensure that everyone in America has access to affordable, reliable high-speed internet—regardless of their income, race, or zip code. Over the last year, all 56 states and territories have developed their plans for how they will spend more than $40 billion in funding to connect every unserved location within their borders. That funding comes atop $1 billion for middle-mile infrastructure, which will build more than 12,000 miles of fiber across 370 counties, and $2.3 billion for rural high-speed internet, with 121 awards going to 356 states and territories across the country. For example, in Colorado, Montana, Missouri, Michigan, and Mississippi, construction is underway on projects that will connect rural communities to high-speed internet. These projects, funded with $59 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, will connect 10,500 people, 1,600 farms, and 295 businesses directly to fiber networks. The Department of Commerce has also awarded 148 Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program (TBCP) grants, serving over 280 Tribal Governments, which will connect more than 65,000 Tribal households, subsidizing thousands of devices, and funding digital inclusion activities for Tribal communities. Together, these investments mirror the federal government's historic investment in rural electrification during the 1930s, when the U.S. connected nearly every home and farm in America to electricity and millions of families and our economy reaped the benefits. And, to ensure consumers know what they are paying for, the Administration implemented new rules to ensure internet providers are transparent about their pricing and network performance – by requiring internet service providers to have a "nutrition label" that describes their plan at the point of sale – enabling 300 million Americans to comparison shop for the home or mobile internet plan that best meets their needs and budget.
  • Modernizing the Grid and Deploying Clean Energy: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law includes more than $62 billion in funding at the Department of Energy to advance our clean energy future by investing in clean energy demonstration and deployment projects, developing new technologies, and modernizing our power grid. This includes an investment of over $20 billion to upgrade the nation's grid—a critical component to achieve President Biden's goal of delivering a 100% carbon-pollution free power sector by 2035. To date, the Department of Energy has announced over $5.6 billion in funding for over 60 projects and provided funding to over 200 states, Tribes, and territories. In April 2024, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced up to $331 million through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for capacity contract negotiations with the Southwest Intertie Project-North (SWIP-N). SWIP-N is a new 285-mile transmission line from Idaho to Nevada that will bring over 2,000 megawatts of needed transmission capacity, enough to power 1.7 million homes. In January 2024, the Department of Energy finalized the terms of $1.1 billion in credit payments for the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in California, helping keep this source of clean power operating while preserving over 1,000 good-paying clean energy jobs.
  • Superfund and Brownfields Cleanup: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law delivers the largest-ever investment in tackling legacy pollution, including $5 billion to clean up Superfund and brownfield sites to restore the health and economic vitality of communities that have been exposed to legacy pollution for far too long. In February, the Biden-Harris Administration announced the final round of Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding of over $1 billion to start new cleanup projects and continue work at 100 Superfund sites across the country. Examples include funding to clean up the US Finishing/Cone Mills Superfund site in Greenville, South Carolina, where a century of industrial operations have polluted the area's groundwater. As part of the President's Justice40 Initiative, 82% of Superfund funding from the Infrastructure Law has been directed to disadvantaged communities. In addition, over 20 brownfield sites have completed cleanup efforts and over 100 have been made ready for redevelopment through Infrastructure Law funding to date.
  • Orphaned Wells and Abandoned Mine Lands: Orphaned oil and gas wells and abandoned coal mines left behind by industry continue to pollute millions of Americans' air and water with methane and other pollutants, and pose physical safety risks to communities. Through a total investment of $16 billion from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Department of the Interior is helping fund cleanup efforts at these sites across the country. With this funding, nearly 8,000 orphaned wells have been plugged so far, with tens of thousands more to be plugged using Infrastructure Law funding. States and Tribes are also making progress addressing Abandoned Mine Lands. For example, the Administration has funded the cleanup of the Truetown Discharge abandoned mine land site in Athens County, Ohio, which is the largest acid mine drainage in the state and discharges toxic waste into the watershed. This project will treat 1.4 million gallons of acid mine drainage daily and convert the waste into professional-grade paint for sale through a partnership with Ohio University, helping deliver clean water and support economic development for the community.
  • 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. To date, the Administration has funded over 4,100 projects to build resilience to these threats, ranging from restoring critical waterways and forests to enhancing long-term drought resilience across the American West to reducing wildfire risk. Together, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act include $15.4 billion to support drought-prone communities to address the ongoing megadrought in the West. In fact, earlier this year a historic consensus-based agreement was finalized to conserve water resources in the critical Colorado River System through President Biden's leadership. Already, President Biden's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law has provided more than $3 billion for 475 Western drought resilience projects. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law has also made major investments this year in reducing wildfire risk ahead of another fire season, including $400 million announced from the U.S. Forest Service in February to address 21 designated priority landscapes, to safeguard communities from the ongoing wildfire crisis, which is exacerbated by climate change. For example, the Four Forest Restoration Initiative in Arizona has treated over 130,000 acres of at-risk forest land in FY 2023 alone to reduce wildfire risk.

Joseph R. Biden, Jr., FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Kicks Off Infrastructure Week by Highlighting Historic Results Spurred by President Biden's Investing in America Agenda Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/371866

Filed Under

Categories

Attributes

Simple Search of Our Archives