
Emily Domenech
27:03 - 27:47
"where we see a lot of the questions about eligibility come from projects like broadband projects, like water resources projects, from things that bring online small energy projects or production in, frankly, the energy storage space sometimes can be smaller-scale projects. So my hope is that, you know, when I came in as executive director, I really wanted to ensure we were listing a project in every single one of our 19 sectors. We're at 13 right now."
“where we see a lot of the questions about eligibility come from projects like broadband projects, like water resources projects, from things that bring online small energy projects or production in, frankly, the energy storage space sometimes can be smaller-scale projects. So my hope is that, you know, when I came in as executive director, I really wanted to ensure we were listing a project in every single one of our 19 sectors. We're at 13 right now.”
By lowering the threshold for eligibility under FAST-41, we're opening these benefits to a broader set of projects, not just the large-scale projects we're trying to build across the United States. Can you highlight how enabling a greater number of mid-sized infrastructure projects would benefit our rural communities? So it's a great question, and I think where we see a lot of the questions about eligibility come from projects like broadband projects, like water resources projects, from things that bring online small energy projects or production in, frankly, the energy storage space sometimes can be smaller-scale projects. So my hope is that, you know, when I came in as executive director, I really wanted to ensure we were listing a project in every single one of our 19 sectors. We're at 13 right now.
The federal geological mapping program that nearly doubled Alaska's publicly available subsurface data expires at year end. Two House bills heard Tuesday would reauthorize it through 2031 and layer quantum gravity sensing onto the effort, with Alaska's unmapped interior at the center of the case for both.

The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources heard testimony Tuesday on a bipartisan bill that would cut the FAST-41 permitting threshold from $200 million to $50 million, potentially opening the program to broadband, water, and small energy projects that rural and tribal communities depend on, but a former council director warned the bill cannot compel agencies to act in good faith.
