Mayors from 18 cities and towns along the Mississippi River, stretching from Minnesota to Louisiana, are lobbying Congress and the Trump administration for a $6.85-billion package for priority infrastructure projects and programs that they say are necessary to address recurring floods in the Midwest.
Representatives of the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative, a coalition of 95 mayors along the river, met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and administration officials in the first week of March to advocate for flood-related infrastructure upgrades.
市长正在寻求将其提案的要素包括在《下一项水资源开发法》或新的高速公路和过境重新授权法案中。这些措施的初步工作已经在众议院和参议院开始。
The St. Louis-based coalition says the projects would address acute shocks and climate stresses, including floods, which have hit the region over the last several years, causing more than $205 billion in damages since 2005.
The Mississippi River group’s priorities include $100 million to create a revolving-loan program that cities and towns could use to help fund investment in resilience and disaster recovery.
Colin Wellenkamp, executive director of the MRCTI, said the group’s meetings in Washington with lawmakers and administration officials had a theme of “action partnered with innovative financing.”
To that end, the MRCTI announced March 19 that New Orleans and Memphis had won their first resilience bond challenge. Quantified Ventures, a Washington, D.C.-based investment firm partnered on the bond program with the mayoral group through grants from the Walton Family Foundation and the McKnight Foundation.
Eric Letsinger, founder and CEO of Quantified Ventures, said, “We’ve been financing a lot of resilience-related public projects around the country [with] municipal bonds, which is creating an opportunity for financing to come in to fund projects.”
新奥尔良将获得3000万美元，孟菲斯将通过环境影响力债券奖获得1300万美元，以用于基础设施计划。
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell (D) said that through the Finance Authority of New Orleans, “We’ll be able to offer free mortgages.”
Memphis will focus its bond on financing a group of green infrastructure projects to reduce flooding. In September, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved a bill to establish a federal resilience revolving-loan fund. The measure was sponsored by Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) and backed by Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) among others.
