Transportation bill OK’d;
includes Navajo projects

By Kathy Helms
Diné Bureau

WINDOW ROCK – Legislation to amend the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act, or SAFETEA- LU bill, and provide millions of dollars for Arizona road projects has passed both houses of Congress.

U.S. Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Ariz., 1st District, voted Thursday to support the long-awaited legislation to make technical corrections to a large transportation package originally passed by Congress in 2005. The corrections bill passed the House 358-51 and was approved by the Senate two weeks ago.

H.R. 1195 makes technical corrections to many highway, road, and transit provisions included in the 2005 SAFETEA-LU bill, and will make available more than $1 billion in funding for thousands of projects nationwide, including three within Renzi's 1st District. They include:

• $2 million for the planning, design and construction of Navajo Route 9010 off I-40 at Houck to Pine Springs Day School (Exit 348). The 2005 bill only allowed for paving.
• $480,000 for pre-construction and construction of N8086 and N8084 on the Navajo Nation, including survey and archaeological clearances. The 2005 bill only allowed the funding to be used for construction.
• $1.6 million to pave the remaining stretch of BIA Route 4 from the junction of Route 4 and N8031 in Pinon to the Navajo and Hopi border. The change clarifies the location of the project.

“This legislation will release over $4 million in funding for three important road projects in rural Arizona,” Renzi said.

“Additionally, the bill will lessen the local burden for federally funded roads in Arizona due to the high proportion of federally owned land in the state.”

Another provision contained in the bill would lessen the local share of funding for federally supported road projects in Arizona. The local financial burden is changed from 20 percent to 5.7 percent, which will save the state's communities millions of dollars.

Also last week, U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici announced that the city of Grants has been awarded a $187,058 federal grant to continue improvements at the Grants-Milan Municipal Airport.

Domenici, who serves on the Senate appropriations subcommittee that funds the Federal Aviation Administration, said the city will use the FY2008 Airport Improvement Program grant funding for the first phase of perimeter fence project at the airport. Last year, Grants was awarded a $47,000 AIP grant to update the master plan for the airport.

“Grants and Cibola County are angling to increase their economic development activities and a safe municipal airport can be an asset in that effort,” Domenici said.

He also announced that the Women’s Self-Sufficiency Team Corp. has been awarded a $234,643 federal grant to help rural nonprofit organizations sustain small business development.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development grant will be used by WESST Corp. to provide technical assistance and training related to expanding job opportunities in rural New Mexico and the Navajo Nation through small business development. The Albuquerque-based nonprofit organization received a similar $50,000 grant last year.

WESST Corp,'s field office in Gallup is working to support weavers on the Navajo Nation, and its Santa Fe office is working in the Española region to back fiber arts as small business enterprises.

The USDA estimates that WESST Corp can use this funding to benefit more than 20 low-income, rural communities in New Mexico and the Navajo Nation.