On Monday, the White House released a so-called rural playbook intended to highlight and promote the billions of dollars available to smaller communities from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
Alongside issues like broadband access and safe drinking water, the document prioritizes extreme weather and especially forest fires. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland spoke to reporters from Colorado on Monday, where she met with firefighters and fire response coordinators about the new opportunities.
“The reality is that these days, fire season lasts for much of the year and rural communities across the country often bear the brunt of more intense fire seasons fueled by extreme heat and drought conditions,” Haaland said. “The funding ... will be crucial to ensuring those communities have the resources they need to bolster climate resilience and protect natural areas."
The emphasis underscores the growing threat to rural communities as they grapple with the impacts of climate change. The United States faced 22 extreme weather events in 2021 — from floods to fires to wind storms. Each costs over $1 billion and added up to a price tag of nearly $100 billion, according to the White House. The 2021 CoreLogic Wildfire Risk Report found similar high costs and millions of homes at risk. The group has also recently found that the impacts span 13 states, largely in the West.
The release of the new document comes alongside a “rural infrastructure tour,” kicked off by a trip from President Joe Biden to Menlo, Iowa on Tuesday. During a Yahoo Finance Live interview Monday, White House Director of the National Economic Council Brian Deese added that Biden would also use Tuesday’s Iowa stop to “talk about additional actions we can take” to combat high gas prices.
The overall tour is set to feature stops in the coming weeks from officials including Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in addition to Haaland’s Colorado visit.
“These generational infrastructure investments will provide rural communities across America affordable high-speed internet, clean drinking water, reliable electricity, better roads and bridges, and good-paying jobs,” Biden said in a statement.
‘An opportunity for folks to protect their communities’
In one of the fire-specific initiatives highlighted this week, $5.5 billion will go to the Forest Service and its land and will largely be used to prevent fires.
The funding will “provide an opportunity for folks to protect their communities and their homes and their lives and to also make sure that our firefighters are not having to deal with the risk and the tremendous danger of these catastrophic wildfires," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said.
The administration is launching ambitious efforts to remove vegetation that can fuel wildfires on more than 4 million acres and also reforest up to 400,000 acres of previously burned land.
Some of the money will boost current firefighters' pay. Currently, the Forest Service only guarantees that its firefighters make at least $15 an hour — less than average starting salary for an Amazon warehouse worker. Vilsack noted that his department has struggled with losing employees to other more “financially beneficial” firefighting opportunities.
Some of the money will also fund a $1 billion Community Wildfire Defense Grant Program that will offer grants to communities to beef up their wildfire plans and defenses. There is also money set for other efforts to help establish fleets of vehicles that can be quickly converted to respond to fires.
Other money in the $1.2 trillion law — $550 billion of which is newly authorized spending — is going towards the other effects from climate change. They are also highlighted throughout the playbook, with billions for rural water projects, flood mitigation, pollution cleanup, and other efforts.
There is $14.6 billion set aside for rural-specific projects overall, says Mitch Landrieu, the former New Orleans mayor who's coordinating the overall rollout of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. That is in addition to money for roads and bridges that will help urban and rural communities alike.
Ben Werschkul is a writer and producer for Yahoo Finance in Washington, DC.
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