The Department of Transportation has awarded about $830 million in grants to help local agencies harden roads, bridges and transit systems against the effects of climate change.
The grants announced Thursday come from the bipartisan infrastructure law’s Promoting Resilient Operations for Transformative, Efficient, and Cost-saving Transportation (PROTECT) program and will go to 37 states, plus the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands.
The 80 grants are from the program’s discretionary funds; about $4.3 billion in formula funding from the PROTECT program already is flowing to states, the Transportation Department said in a news release.
America’s transportation system has been battered by climate change for the last decade, with hurricanes, wildfires and heat waves knocking out bridges, washing away highways and flooding subways, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on a call with reporters. The country can’t afford to politicize the response to the threats.
