Biden announces $65B for high-speed internet expansion across country
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that passed last year allows certain low-income families to get a $30 monthly benefit for high-speed internet.
Damien Henderson, USA TODAY
Chunks of federal money have dropped into every corner of New York, thanks to a massive funding measure passed by Congress in 2021 to upgrade infrastructure and spur clean energy.
Two companies in the Rochester area scored almost $76 million in grants to develop hydrogen-power technology.
Far to the south in Rockland County, a total of $43 million has been earmarked for a slew of road-repair plans and other projects.
Westchester County got $12 million for hybrid buses. Two big projects in and near the city of Kingston, including a major bridge renovation, were awarded a gusher of $41 million.
Cash has flowed to those and hundreds of other projects around the state through the $1.2 trillion infrastructure law President Joe Biden signed in 2021. According to federal data, New York grant recipients have gotten nearly $29 billion so far to build or repair roads, bridges, sewer plants and more, in amounts ranging from a few thousand dollars to more than $1 billion.
Some grants announcements have given scattered signs of what the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law did. But its combined impact on New York — the total funding and litany of beneficiaries — is just now becoming clear as Biden prepares to leave office, a little over three years after signing one of the main legislative deeds of his term.
What are New York’s biggest infrastructure grants?
The largest amount is the $1.6 billion dedicated to a set of Metro-North Railroad improvements known as the Penn Station Access project, which began two years ago. It includes construction of four new stations in the East Bronx and 19 miles of tracks from New Rochelle to Penn Station in Manhattan.
It will expand train service for Bronx residents and enable Westchester riders to reach Manhattan’s West Side.
“For far too long, the East and South Bronx has been a transit desert, and communities from New Rochelle to Port Chester have had to go to extra lengths to get to work every day,” Sen. Chuck Schumer said in an announcement about the funding in November 2023.
Second largest was a $1.3 billion grant to repair parts of the century-old train tunnel under New York City’s East River that were damaged by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
Work on the 2.5-mile-long East River Tunnel was cleared to begin in November and includes an overhaul of two of its four tubes.
The 2021 law is paying for a blizzard of smaller projects, cheered with equal zest by the Senate leader who helped craft it. Last week, Schumer announced a $1.8 million grant to replace traffic signals on Utica’s Genesee Street, completing a project on the city’s main drag that was stopped 12 years ago for lack of funding.
“Every Utican knows that these traffic lights can be frustrating and outright dangerous and for years the City of Utica has been developing a plan to fix it,” Schumer said.
Where has the bulk of the money gone?
The vast majority of New York’s money — more than $23 billion — has gone toward transportation, according to grant data compiled by the White House. That means a ton of road and bridge projects, but also airport improvements, electrical-vehicle charging stations, subway station upgrades and more.
Nearly $22 million helped pay for the replacement of the 103-year-old Wurts Street Bridge over the Esopus Creek in Ulster County, a busy span that connects Kingston and Port Ewen. The deteriorating structure had been closed since 2020 and reopened this year after a $60 million overhaul.
The funding also includes $2.1 billion for water projects, $1.8 billion for broadband internet service, $764 million for clean energy and $189 million for environmental cleanups.
Among the largest clean-energy grants were two totaling nearly $76 million for Plug Power, a company that is creating hydrogen fuel cells outside Rochester in West Henrietta.
That funding was announced in July, along with $11 million in federal grants for Ionomr Innovations, another Rochester-area hydrogen company that opened just four miles from Plug Power.
What other federal money has come to New York?
Two other laws passed during the first two years of Biden’s presidency — when Democrats controlled both the House and Senate — have sent another $3 billion in funding to New York, historically known as a “donor state” because it paid the federal government more in taxes than it got in return.
According to the White House data, New York has gotten $1.6 billion so far for projects funded through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, largely for clean energy and environmental remediation.
For New Rochelle in Westchester County, “environmental remediation” applied to its plans for a mile-long, elevated greenway to connect a historically Black neighborhood to the city’s thriving downtown, along with other improvements in the Lincoln Avenue area. That long-planned LINC project was awarded $16 million through the Inflation Reduction Act.
New York has gotten $1.4 billion so far through the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, which was meant to spur U.S. microchip manufacturing, according to the White House data. That consists largely of $1.3 billion in funding for an expansion by chip maker GlobalFoundries, which has a Saratoga County factory and is building a second one next to it.
Chris McKenna covers government and politics for The Journal News and USA Today Network. Reach him at cmckenna@gannett.com.