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Money for rural broadband makes up a considerable portion of funding recently announced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for infrastructure projects across the nation’s most remote areas.
Federal officials have announced the allocation of millions of dollars to bring high-speed internet to underserved areas of Florida, along with other rural and tribal communities.
The funding, which includes $51.7 million for the government’s ReConnect Program and the Broadband Technical Assistance Program, was announced by USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack and White House Domestic Policy Advisor Neera Tanden during a visit to North Carolina on Tuesday.
According to a press release from the USDA following Vilsack’s announcement, $9.7 million of the more than $51 million for broadband will go to two dozen organizations that “deliver or receive technical assistance to expand high-speed internet access for people in rural and Tribal communities across 17 states” through the Broadband Technical Assistance Program.
The remaining $42 million for high-speed internet in the USDA’s recent round of infrastructure funding will go to the ReConnect Program, for grants to bring high-speed internet to underserved communities in Florida.
The majority of the more than $772 million in funding announced by the USDA Wednesday will go towards providing clean drinking water and sanitary wastewater systems in rural areas, according to the USDA.
“President Biden’s Investing in America agenda is transforming our country for the better – reaching communities in every corner of the United States, including those that have too often been left behind,” Secretary Vilsack said while announcing the funding. “The investments I’m announcing today will help us build our economy from the middle out and bottom up by bringing high-speed internet, clean water, modern infrastructure and good-paying jobs to communities in rural areas, in turn making it more possible for young people to build a good life in the communities they love, and for more Americans to find new opportunity in rural communities.”
Funding for many of the projects was made possible by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, according to the USDA’s release.
In addition to Florida, the USDA’s latest round of high-speed internet funding will benefit residents of Alaska, California, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming, according to the USDA.
Some of the grants detailed in the USDA’s announcement included $997,000 to Merit Network Inc., through the Broadband Technical Assistance Program, for the development of a digital equity strategy “to promote the expansion of high-speed internet in eight communities across Muskegon, Roscommon, Van Buren, Ogemaw and Saginaw counties in Michigan.”
According to the USDA, the agency has invested $3.7 billion in well over 300 ReConnect projects that “will bring high-speed internet access to more than 485,000 people in the hardest to reach communities of rural America” since the beginning of the Biden Administration.
Grants to help foster connectivity in rural Florida communities under the ReConnect Program included $17.8 million for the Suwannee Valley Electric Cooperative Inc. to connect 19,000 people, 480 businesses, 650 farms, and 42 educational facilities in Columbia, Hamilton and Suwannee counties, according to the USDA’s announcement.
