Funding from the Infrastructure Bill primarily filters through programs that already exist, said Fleming. What’s important is the shift in emphasis. The bill consistently brings up resiliency, sustainability, and equity, which Fleming sees as an emphasis in sensitivity toward the environment and all people within existing programs.
As a result of the increased demand, environmental agencies are looking to modernize their operations and streamline permitting processes. This is holistic, and requires location technology from field operations to work with stakeholders, public hearings, transparency, and everything in between, and moving the data around within the agencies. Fleming suggests environmental agencies assess their existing systems and understand how they work together (and how they don’t), and identify areas ripe for improvement, especially using location technology that these agencies already own.
These two bills do different things, and combined they offer a two-pronged approach. In simplified terms, the Infrastructure Bill authorizes a significant amount of funding to existing conservation and environmental programs, while the Inflation Reduction Act provides tax incentives.
This particular government has lots of leadership from local governments in it, said Fleming, so they’re catering to local governments here and trying to reach out to communities that might not have taken advantage of these funds in the past for any number of reasons. Grant writing, for example, is a lengthy and complicated process, and there needs to be awareness of where funding is coming from and how to access it. That’s where that equitability question comes in, and local communities right now have the opportunity to get federal funding directly to them.
There are many existing programs administered by state governments that are going to provide local communities and nonprofits and other industries with opportunities to achieve the goals of environmental sensitivity, sustainability, resiliency, and equity outlined in the bill.
At the local level, individuals can visit grants.gov to take advantage of programs. Many of these programs now have mechanisms built in to allow funding to be allocated for technical assistance such as grant-writing, which Fleming sees as a measure designed to increase accessibility and ease of tapping into the resources available. For the everyday person, there will be direct tax incentives on things like appliances, though the exact process for administering this is still being nailed down.
At Esri, Fleming’s three primary domains are (1) outdoor recreation; (2) land and wildlife management; and (3) environmental regulation. These bills will affect these three areas differently.
View the full video for Fleming’s Q&A with Ecobot’s Cameron Davis and Liv Haney.