The first round of funding for rural infrastructure projects was released by the year-old U.S. Rural Infrastructure Opportunity Fund that mixes public and private capital, said the USDA. It said 22 projects in 14 states received $161 million for use in water and community facilities projects. In a statement, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the fund, by attracting private funding, was a way to extend the USDA’s support of rural development. The projects included work on two hospitals in Illinois and North Carolina.
The infrastructure fund, with Denver-based CoBank as the anchor investor, was announced last July at a rural economic development conference sponsored by the White House. Since then, the USDA announced formation of three rural business-investment companies to leverage private-sector resources for rural projects.
In related news, a bold effort by the USDA to expand broadband coverage in rural America “has failed to deliver,” says Politico, which examined 300 projects earmarked for funding from the 2009 economic stimulus package. “More than 40 of the projects … never got started at all,” says Politico. Instead of bringing broadband service to 7 million people, “the number [is] in the hundreds of thousands.”