Special Briefing on the Biden Infrastructure Plan: Resilience, Equity, and Federal Investment

Municipal officials and analysts have their sights set on social equity and climate resilience as Congress debates more than a trillion dollars of infrastructure spending proposed by the Biden administration.

Panelists at a Jury 15 online briefing, co-sponsored by the Penn Institute for Urban Research and The Volcker Alliance, said infrastructure investment should be focused on poorer communities, which have been hit the hardest by the pandemic, natural disasters, and climate change.

"I look at all infrastructure through the climate lens," Municipal Market Analytics (MMA) President Thomas G. Doe said as part of Special Briefing on the Biden Infrastructure Plan: Resilience, Equity, and Federal Investment. "It's looking not just at existing projects and their risk, but also what the future probable risks are for any new efforts that are being done, and, especially, not just on durability but also on equity as well."

The webinar was the 22nd in a series of 60-minute online conversations featuring government leaders and experts from the Volcker Alliance’s and Penn IUR’s national research networks. Volcker Alliance Senior Vice President and Director of Local Initiatives William Glasgall and Penn IUR Co-Director Susan Wachter moderated the discussion. Idaho Governor Brad Little, U.S. Representative Carolyn Bourdeaux, and Nassau County, New York Executive Laura Curran joined Doe on the panel.

The online briefing took place with the U.S. House and Senate in the midst of hashing out legislation to boost the economy through a massive investment in the nation's infrastructure. The proposed investment would come on top of the COVID-19 relief spending enacted last year and early this year: the $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act; and the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).

Rep. Bourdeaux said the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee passed a bill to invest $547 billion for surface transportation programs, which would reauthorize the Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act. The bill represents an 80 percent increase over the previous infrastructure bill for roads, bridges, transit, and rail needs. About the same amount of transportation money was under consideration as part of a $1.2 trillion, five-year package extended over eight years that also includes money for broadband access, water infrastructure, and electric vehicles, she said. The bill includes what Bourdeaux called a "huge increase," to $100 billion, for water and wastewater investment. A version before the Senate has a smaller but still significant increase, with $60 billion for water and wastewater.

"As you know this is not a sexy topic," but it is critical, she said. "It's kind of like your abs when you work out: It is your core."

The nation has done little over the past decade to invest in water infrastructure, she said, resulting in lead leaching into the water in urban areas and leaving suburban areas struggling to keep up with growth. "Swaths of suburbs on septic systems can't grow or develop unless they have water and wastewater infrastructure that underpins them."

Bourdeaux said a "huge struggle" was underway over how to pay for the infrastructure investment, as lawmakers seek to avoid both raising taxes and cutting expenditures. "The pay-fors are wobbly," she said. "I'm not a huge fan of them. I'm willing to make some compromises to get this done. We really need this investment, not only for economic development … but to address the threat of climate change."

Bourdeaux said she was "hopeful" of support for the infrastructure bill from rural, Republican states, where officials have shown an interest in water and broadband, along with other traditional infrastructure. Democrats plan to include additional money for human infrastructure in the budget, she said.

Governor Little said Idaho was being cautious in its use of relief money. "We're not certain, and I don't think anybody is, about when this is going to normalize," he said. "We want to make sure we know what normal is … and what to do when the federal government ceases to inject money into the economy."

He said Idaho would have liked "a little more flexibility" to use CARES and ARPA money on transportation and suggested that restrictions on the uses of those funds may have been part of an effort to drum up political support for the current infrastructure proposals. The state does have a need to maintain its roads and address congestion, he said.

"We're the fastest growing state in the nation, and we want to plan for that," Little said. "As the state grows, infrastructure is a way to address housing affordability, too, if you do it right," he said, suggesting that local governments can build corridors to areas where it's cheaper to build.

He also said Idaho was taking steps on its own to restore the aquifer.

"Regardless of the federal government," he said, "we in Idaho fully intend to do the right thing for future generations."

Curran said Nassau County, which sits on top of its sole source of drinking water, also is focusing efforts on water and wastewater projects. It has "a big ask in" for federal infrastructure support.

"We need to be as resilient as we can along our shoreline," Curran said.

"We are about 90 percent sewered here in Nassau, but on the North Shore there are about 30,000 properties that are not on sewer. They are on septic tanks, and most of the septic tanks are old," Curran said. "They leach a lot of nitrogen into aquifer and into the water. We're using the federal money we have as a grant to people to upgrade their septic tanks."

The county is also using federal funds for police training.

"When you have stable communities, safe communities, and more environmentally resilient communities, that's good for the economy, ergo it’s good for our credit rating," she said, noting the county's efforts to rectify chronic credit issues.

Doe pressed for better long-term planning for climate change. He said the $4 trillion municipal bond market, which finances 75 percent of U.S. infrastructure, issues 30-year debt, but credit rating firms typically look at risk over a two-to-three-year time horizon. MMA is working with risQ, a climate analytics business, to quantify the long-term climate risk for every municipal bond, along with mortgage-backed securities.

"This enables investors, government, planners to look at flood risk, intense heat, hurricane risk, wildfire risk," he said. 

Such long-term research will allow officials to consider, on an ongoing basis, where people are going to migrate and where will there be new growth, Doe said. "When we talk about infrastructure we need to talk about what that future might look like."

Special Briefings are made possible by funding from The Century Foundation, the Volcker Alliance, and members of the Penn IUR Advisory Board.