Rural road access was Alaska's biggest federal award last week

The biggest single chunk of federal money to reach Alaska in the last week of July went to rural road access — $2.68 million through the Tribal Transportation Program, which builds and maintains roads to and within Alaska Native village communities and Indian lands.

That access is a practical matter across much of Alaska, where villages depend on a handful of roads, transit routes and airport links to reach health care, groceries, schools and government services. Airports drew the next-largest award in the same weekly rollup, posted by USAspending.gov, and smaller awards went to tribal broadband, tribal self-governance, forestry on Indian lands, children's mental health services and senior nutrition. Across all 24 programs, Alaska's net take was about $7 million.

Alaska has far less road than its size suggests. At a Senate hearing in July, Sen. Dan Sullivan said the state has "less road miles than Connecticut, and we are almost 120 times bigger than Connecticut," and that more than 230 Alaska communities aren't connected by road at all.

The figures cover awards recorded for work performed in Alaska during a single week, and don't show which tribes or villages received the money.