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The $1 trillion infrastructure package passed by the House on Friday will touch every corner of the U.S. in one way or another. And while it's still too soon to say exactly how all the money will be spent, it will certainly help address pressing issues in the West like the deepening water crisis, as well as the issue of abandoned oil and gas wells. It also includes money for important ecological programs, like endangered species recovery, trail and stream restoration, and wildfire mitigation, as well as funding for Native American tribes.
According to the Associated Press and the New York Times, the bill includes over $8 billion for Western water infrastructure. That includes $1.15 billion for water storage and transport, including dams and canals, as well as groundwater storage projects. It also includes $1 billion for projects that recycle wastewater, $1 billion for water projects in rural areas—like pipeline and treatment facility rehabilitation—and $300 million for conservation and storage projects in the Colorado River Basin.
The bill will help address orphaned, or abandoned, oil wells, according to New Mexico Sen. Ben Ray Lujan, who got the provision into the infrastructure package. The Revive Economic Growth and Reclaim Orphaned Wells, or REGROW Act, would require the Interior Department to establish a program to plug, remediate and reclaim orphaned wells on federal public land, according to the Washington Post. It would also provide funding for state regulators and tribes to clean up abandoned wells on their land. The bill includes a total of $5 billion to address the problem, according to an op-ed by Lujan.
According to the Vail Daily, the bill includes $500 million for planning and conducting prescribed burns in forests, to be split equally between the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, as well as $500 million for community wildfire defense grants to at-risk communities. Unfortunately, it also includes $500 million for “mechanical thinning and timber harvesting,” which environmental groups say is an excuse to increase logging and will actually increase wildfire risk.
Finally, according to The Paper, New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich secured $50 million for endangered species recovery programs in the Upper Colorado and San Juan river basins, as well as $250 million for trail and stream restoration projects. And successful advocacy by tribes resulted in a $15 billion pot of money for much-needed infrastructure and broadband updates in Indian Country, according to Native News Online.
While the bill does a lot of good things, it does not significantly address the root cause of climate change. According to Politico, the bill falls far short of President Biden's goals to reduce transportation emissions. It also lacks safeguards to ensure road spending is focused on existing infrastructure, rather than building new roads. That could backfire in the West, where new road construction may cut through our public lands and further fragment wildlife habitat. And finally, the bill includes subsidies for minerals and nuclear reactors, according to E&E News, which could increase mining on Western public lands.
Big Oil dominates climate summit
Fossil fuel companies sent over 500 lobbyists to the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, according to CNN. That's more people than any single country at the summit sent, according to the environmental group Global Witness, and around two dozen more than the largest country delegation.
"The presence of hundreds of those being paid to push the toxic interests of polluting fossil fuel companies, will only increase the skepticism of climate activists who see these talks as more evidence of global leaders' dithering and delaying," said Murray Worthy, gas campaign leader at Global Witness.
The lobbyists included representatives from Shell, Gazprom and BP, among other oil companies. Canada, Russia and Brazil were among the countries that registered industry lobbyists for the summit.
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National parks and our communities are on fire; they’re under water; they’re being inundated by storms... They are at the forefront of the climate crisis.”
