On September 25th to 26th 2024, the National Governors Association hosted Infrastructure Coordinators in Washington DC for a two-day workshop. This meeting marked the eighth Infrastructure Coordinator Workshop held since the passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). The meeting brought together over three dozen Governors’ Infrastructure Coordinators and Advisors to hear from federal officials and industry practitioners, share best practices, and discuss infrastructure initiatives in their jurisdictions.
Official programming for Governors’ Advisors commenced the morning of Wednesday September 25th at the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI). Following opening remarks from DOI’s intergovernmental affairs and senior leadership teams, several DOI bureaus and offices provided an overview of their work implementing IIJA and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) programs and supporting states and territories. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) discussed their progress in directly delivering projects on their lands and outlined how they are facilitating major infrastructure projects—such as broadband and grid infrastructure—through their permitting improvement and rights of way efforts. The Bureau of Reclamation dove into their progress administering water supply and drought resiliency opportunities for the benefit of 17 western states, including water recycling, water storage, desalination and drought resilience measures, and the Office of Policy, Management and Budget discussed implementation of DOI’s $4.275 billion in funds to plug, remediate and reclaim orphaned wells across the country.
Other DOI offices presented to the group on their work implementing historic infrastructure spending, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. While not recipients of IIJA or IRA funds, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement discussed their efforts with well plugging and decommissioning of orphaned oil and gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management highlighted their work leasing and approving offshore wind projects located on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf.