§2341c Criteria for Funding Environmental Infrastructure Projects

Summary

The Secretary must create specific rules for scoring and ranking individual environmental assistance projects no later than 180 days after December 27, 2020. When scoring projects, the Secretary must at least look at local economic effects (like local benefits, effects on development, jobs created, and whether the local partner can pay its share); the community’s demographics (for example, if it is rural or economically disadvantaged, including minority communities); how much funding the project already has; the Corps of Engineers’ ability to fund it; whether other federal programs could do the same work at the same cost to the local partner; and any other suitable factors. The Secretary must put these rules into the annual Civil Works Direct Program Development Policy Guidance. For fiscal year 2022, and every two years after that, when the President sends the annual budget to Congress, the Secretary must send a report to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the Senate Appropriations Committee, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and the House Appropriations Committee showing the Secretary’s ranking of the authorized projects using these rules.