Rural infrastructure projects across the country will receive a combined $5.2 billion in federal grants and loans to expand access to high-speed internet, electricity, and clean water, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Thursday. The money will go to 359 projects in 46 states and Puerto Rico through seven USDA rural development programs.
“When we invest in rural infrastructure, we invest in the livelihoods and health of people in rural America,” said Vilsack. “The investments we are announcing today will drive the creation of good-paying union jobs and grow the economy sustainably and equitably so that everyone gets ahead for decades to come.”
Projects range from an $86 million loan to Coweta-Fayette EMC to build and improve 602 miles of electrical power lines in eight Georgia counties to a $2.6 million grant to Interior Telephone Co. to build a 19-mile optical fiber system in Port Lyons, a town of 194 people on Alaska’s Kodiak Island, 300 miles south-southwest of Anchorage.