We’ve discussed this bill in these posts. NEPA and permitting. Miscellaneous goodies. Wildfire risk reduction Legacy roads and trails.
In this Missoulian articleRob Cheney rounded up some interesting people to comment. First, Wes Swaffer of American Forests:
One thing Swaffer was particularly excited about was the unleashing of the Reforestation Trust Fund, which pays for nurturing and planting new trees on national forests. Until now, the fund could only spend $30 million a year. The infrastructure bill allows it to spend $266 million a year on a backlog of almost 4 million acres of U.S. Forest Service lands.
“This is everything from getting seedlings in production to putting cone-collection crews out there,” Swaffer said. “That $30 million cap prevented much increase in activities, even though
there’s significant need from fires and insect infestation and disease. This will create economic opportunities in rural communities. We don’t know who will be doing that labor, but it expands Forest Service capacity.”
Hopefully jobs in reforestation and cone collection will create economic opportunities. As many here remember, last time the FS increased its capacity (70’s and 80’s) the lowest-bidder contracting procedures didn’t always lead to the employment of locals.
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Also Joshua Lynsen of Land Trust Alliance:
More FEMA Bucks
A FEMA spokesperson on Friday confirmed the agency was repositioning itself to “focus on system-wide critical lifelines and large projects that protect infrastructure and community
systems.” Along with the new community grant program, it has authorization to spend $800 million on dam safety and removal, $3.5 billion on flood mitigation, $1 billion on cybersecurity grants, and $500 million for the Safeguarding Tomorrow Through Ongoing Risk Mitigation (STORM) Act revolving loan fund.
More Tranmission Lines.
Lynsen added the infrastructure bill has money for new interstate electric transmission projects, “including safeguards to avoid disrupting sensitive environmental and cultural heritage sites. This language could provide important protection for lands in conservation status as our nation shifts to more electrification and away from fossil fuels.”
That could help wind and solar projects get their electricity to larger residential markets.
Here’s a link to the Missoulian article: https://missoulian.com/news/local/forests-feel-spending-boost-from-infrastructure-bill/article_40cb12b3-1ed1-5242-8d58-822f23829ec7.html
And another quote from an interesting person:
That has some critics of the Forest Service concerned. Mike Bader, an independent analyst and frequent opponent of logging projects in western Montana, said he saw both good and bad initiatives.
“It’s good they’ve got money there for road reclamation and restoration, because they’ve got a huge backlog,” said Bader, whose work on documenting unmaintained roads in the Ninemile area west of Missoula recently resulted in a court-ordered halt of the Soldier-Butler project there. “That’s one positive aspect. But on some of the other fire stuff, the devil’s in the details.”
Not sure where Wes Swaffar is coming up with the Reforestation Trust Fund going up to $266 million per year. Those funds come from timber tariffs and you can’t spend more than the timber tariff income. Figures that I saw prior to the Infrastructure Bill passing were more in the range of $90 million to $120 million per year, depending on tariff collections.
A. I don’t know, but maybe he is talking the max and your figures are related to the current range of tariff collections?