Vermont Business Magazine USDA Rural Development State Director for Vermont and New Hampshire, Sarah Waring, today announced $1,878,000 in federal funding for seven regional and municipal infrastructure projects in the Twin States through the Solid Waste Management Grants Program and the Water and Waste Disposal Loan and Grant Program. The investments are part of a $762.8 million loan and grant package announced earlier today by USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack in Edgecombe, N.C., marking the kickoff of the fourth tour of President Biden’s Investing in America Agenda, which includes diverse programs in broadband, agriculture, clean energy and infrastructure, among others.
The funding is made possible through the historic, bipartisan Inflation Reduction Act, and will benefit more than 1 million rural residents in 45 states, Puerto Rico, and the Northern Mariana Islands.
See List of Vermont Projects Below
“Too often, the bottleneck to business and community development is hidden underground,” said Waring. “There’s infrastructure we need—like water and waste management—that can be hard to plan for and hard to finance. With today’s investments in our rural Twin State communities, we are following the Biden Harris administration’s call to invest locally. Our children and our communities can have a brighter future when we put our resources into our hometowns, and we are proud to be a part of that future.”
“President Biden's Investing in America agenda is transforming our country for the better – reaching communities in every corner of the United States, including those that have too often been left behind,” Vilsack said. “The investments I'm announcing today will help us build our economy from the middle out and bottom up by bringing high-speed internet, modern infrastructure and good-paying jobs to communities in rural areas, in turn making it more possible for young people to build a good life in the communities they love, and for more Americans to find new opportunity in rural communities.”
USDA’s most recent Rural America at a Glance report, published in November 2023, signals that the Biden-Harris Administration’s investments in rural American infrastructure, jobs and overall recovery are working. Specifically, the report found that the rural population is growing after a decade of overall population loss, with growth of approximately a quarter percent from 2020 to 2022. It also showed that rural employment levels and annual growth rates have nearly returned to those seen in the years prior to the pandemic. In particular, the emergence of the clean energy
economy is a growing employment sector, with clean energy jobs employing more than 243,000 workers in nonmetropolitan counties in 2021, and those jobs have continued to grow through the Biden-Harris Administration’s investments since. The rural population is also experiencing a decline in poverty. In 2021, 9.7 percent fewer nonmetropolitan counties experienced persistent poverty (county-level poverty rates of 20 percent or higher over the last 30 years) compared with a decade earlier.
USDA Rural Development provides loans and grants to help expand economic opportunities, create jobs and improve the quality of life for millions of Americans in rural areas. This assistance supports infrastructure improvements; business development; housing; community facilities such as schools, public safety and health care; and high-speed internet access in rural, tribal and high-poverty areas. Visit the Rural Data Gateway to and www.usda.gov to learn how and where these investments are impacting rural America.
Vermont Projects
Source: MONTPELIER, VT, FEBRUARY 21, 2024 -- USDA
