Mountains Nevada Arizona

Competitive Grants

IIJA Competitive Grant Programs

In addition to the expected $4 billion in formula funding, Governor Sisolak and his administration are also pursuing numerous competitive grants under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. State agencies are both applying directly for these grants and providing support to outside organizations and entities to access these critical infrastructure dollars.

Listed below are competitive grants offered through the IIJA that State agencies are either planning to pursue or support. The IIJA program is listed alongside the infrastructure focus area. Expand below to learn more, including the expected lead applicant and more details about the grant program. This content will be updated as State agencies pursue additional IIJA grants. Please note that IIJA grants being pursued by outside organizations and other entities are not included below.

Department of Conservation & Natural Resources

This program is intended to implement State Forest Action Plans. State plans were revised in 2020 for all 59 States and territories—they offer practical and comprehensive roadmaps for investing Federal, State, local, and private resources where they can be most effective in achieving national conservation goals.

Department of Transportation

The Prioritization Process Pilot Program is a program to support data-driven approaches to planning that can be evaluated for public benefit. The Prioritization Process Pilot Program will award grants to selected States and Metropolitan Planning Organizations to fund the development and implementation of publicly accessible, transparent prioritization processes to assess and score projects according to locally determined priorities, and to use such evaluations to inform the selection of projects to include in transportation plans.

Department of Conservation & Natural Resources

This program is responsible for the management of programs with the authority to dispose of National Forest System timber and non-timber forest products harvested for commercial, personal, and Tribal uses. Areas include sale preparation, contract administration, purchaser suspension and debarment, special forest products, and related authorities and programs.

Department of Conservation & Natural Resources

The Forest Health Management on Federal Lands program helps the National Forest System and other actively managed Federal lands to suppress forest insects and diseases. Forest Health Management on Federal Lands’ work includes technical assistance, and suppression on non-Federal lands. The program helps State agencies create more fire-adapted communities by implementing pre-fire prevention and mitigation programs and emphasizing pre-fire planning and risk reduction in the Wildland Urban Interface. The program funds important training in safer initial attack responses to wildfire that are also effective. Additionally, the program improves capacity to assist other Federal, State, and local agencies in aiding communities affected by fire and non-fire emergencies, such as hurricanes and floods.

Department of Conservation & Natural Resources

The Wildfire Management Fuels Management program helps protect vulnerable communities from wildfire while preparing communities and natural landscapes for a changing climate through hazardous fuels management strategies, including mechanical thinning, pre-commercial thinning in young stands, timber harvesting, prescribed fire, and installation of control locations such as fuel breaks.

Department of Conservation & Natural Resources

The Preparedness Program funds a range of actions that help the Federal government prepare to respond to wildland fire. These include hiring people, training them, tracking their qualifications, and planning our wildland fire response ahead of time. It also provides for the purchasing of equipment for early wildfire detection, real-time monitoring and radios to support interoperability with interagency partners; financial assistance to local communities to purchase slip-on tanks; and increases in firefighter pay and other firefighter workforce reforms.

Department of Conservation & Natural Resources

These funds will be used to support wildfire prediction, detection, observation, modeling, and forecasting. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will procure mission-critical infrastructure, advanced operational systems, and accelerate the development and delivery of fire weather decision support tools, cloud-based software, and dissemination services.

Department of Transportation

The RAISE program provides supplemental funding for grants to the State and local entities listed above on a competitive basis for projects that will have a significant local/regional impact. Projects eligible under RAISE include—a highway or bridge project eligible for assistance under title 23, United States Code; a public transportation project eligible for assistance under chapter 53 of title 49,United States Code; a passenger rail or freight rail transportation project eligible for assistance under title 49, United States Code; a port infrastructure investment, including inland port infrastructure and a land port-of-entry; the surface transportation components of certain eligible airport projects; a project for investment in a surface transportation facility located on Tribal land, the title or maintenance responsibility of which is vested in the Federal Government; a project to replace or rehabilitate a culvert or prevent stormwater runoff for the purpose of improving habitat for aquatic species; and any other surface transportation infrastructure project that the Secretary considers to be necessary to advance the goal of the program.

Department of Transportation

The Nationally Significant Freight and Highway Projects program, also known as “INFRA”, awards competitive grants for multimodal freight and highway projects of national or regional significance to improve the safety, efficiency, and reliability of the movement of freight and people in and across rural and urban areas. Projects that improve safety, generate economic benefits, reduce congestion, enhance resiliency, and hold the greatest promise to eliminate freight bottlenecks and improve critical freight movements.

Department of Transportation

The National Infrastructure Project Assistance Program will support large, complex projects that are difficult to fund by other means and likely to generate national or regional economic, mobility, or safety benefits. Projects eligible under the Mega program include: 1) a highway or bridge project carried out on: the National Multimodal Freight Network; the National Highway Freight Network; or the National Highway System; 2) a freight intermodal (including public ports) or freight rail project that provides a public benefit; 3) a railway-highway grade separation or elimination project; 4) an intercity passenger rail project; and 5) public transportation projects that are eligible for Federal Transit Administration funding of title 49, United States Code, and are part of a project described above.

Department of Transportation

The Rural Surface Transportation Grant Program will support projects to improve and expand the surface transportation infrastructure in rural areas to increase connectivity, improve the safety and reliability of the movement of people and freight, and generate regional economic growth and improve quality of life.

Department of Transportation

The Highway Safety Improvement Program provides States with critical safety funding that is used to save lives and prevent serious injuries on all public roads. The Highway Safety Improvement Program is based on a performance-driven process that identifies and analyzes highway safety problems and advances highway safety improvement projects that have the greatest potential to reduce fatalities and serious injuries.

Department of Conservation & Natural Resources

The Clean Water State Revolving Fund program is a Federal-State partnership that provides communities low-cost financing for a wide range of water quality infrastructure projects. Under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, 49 percent of Clean Water State Revolving Fund funds shall be eligible to be grants or 100 percent principal forgiveness loans. The Clean Water State Revolving Fund program provides capitalization grants to States, which will provide a long-term source of State financing for construction of wastewater treatment facilities and implementation of other water quality management activities.

Department of Wildlife & Department of Agriculture

This program is under development by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  Additional details are expected to be provided in the coming months. The State of Nevada is working at the federal level to accomplish its seed strategy.

Department of Conservation & Natural Resources

This program provides funding for invasive species detection, prevention, and eradication on private or public lands. Eligible uses include projects and programs for invasive species detection, prevention, and eradication, including conducting research and providing resources to facilitate the detection of invasive species at points of entry and awarding grants for eradication of invasive species on Federal and non-Federal land.

Governor’s Office of Science, Innovation and Technology

The purpose of the grant program is to expand and extend middle-mile infrastructure to reduce the cost of connecting unserved and underserved areas to the internet backbone. Eligible applicants include States, political subdivisions of a State, Tribal governments, technology companies, electric utilities, utility cooperatives, public utility districts, telecommunications companies, telecommunications cooperatives, nonprofit foundations, nonprofit corporations, nonprofit institutions, nonprofit associations, regional planning councils, Native entities, or economic development authorities.

 

Department of Transportation

Airports eligible for Airport Infrastructure Grants include Primary airports, certain cargo airports, and most general aviation/commercial service airports that are not primary airports but in the National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems. Project eligibility tracks Passenger Facility Charge eligibility with the exception of Debt Service. Bipartisan Infrastructure Law specifically States that the funds cannot be used for Debt Service.

Governor’s Office of Economic Development & Governor’s Office of Energy

This program provides grants for battery materials processing to ensure that the United States has a viable battery materials processing industry. Funds can also be used to expand our domestic capabilities in battery manufacturing and enhance processing capacity. Eligible uses include demonstration projects, construction of commercial-scale facilities, and retrofit or retooling of existing battery material processing facilities.

Governor’s Office of Economic Development & Governor’s Office of Energy

This program provides grants to provide grants to ensure that the United States has a viable domestic manufacturing and recycling capability to support a North American battery supply chain. Eligible uses include demonstration projects, construction of commercial-scale facilities, and retrofit or retooling of existing facilities for battery component manufacturing, advanced battery manufacturing, and recycling.

Governor’s Office of Energy

This program provides competitive grants to make energy efficiency, renewable energy, and alternative fueled vehicle upgrades and improvements at public schools.

Department of Conservation & Natural Resources

State or local governments, eligible contractors, and nonprofit school transportation associations are authorized to receive grant funds under this program. Fifty percent of the funds are authorized for zero-emission school buses, and fifty percent of the funds are authorized for alternative fuels and zero-emission school buses. Funds may be prioritized for rural or low-income communities and entities that have matching funds available. The Environmental Protection Agency Administrator is authorized to provide funds to cover up to 100 percent of the costs for the replacement of the bus.

Governor’s Office of Economic Development

This program expands an existing program at the Department of Energy for research, development, and demonstration of electric vehicle battery recycling and second-life applications for vehicle batteries. Eligible uses include: (i) To conduct research, development, testing, evaluation of solutions to increase the rate and productivity of electric drive vehicle battery recycling; and(ii) for research, development, and demonstration projects to create innovative and practical approaches to increase the recycling and second-use of electric drive vehicle batteries.

Department of Transportation

The Office of the Secretary’s Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation Grant program provides supplemental funding grants to rural, midsized, and large communities to conduct demonstration projects focused on advanced smart city or community technologies and systems in a variety of communities to improve transportation efficiency and safety.

Department of Conservation & Natural Resources

Grantees deliver technical assistance to businesses – including those communities with environmental justice concerns – to identify and adopt source reduction practices and technologies that benefit businesses, communities, and local economies. Pollution Prevention means reducing or eliminating pollutants from entering any waste stream or otherwise being released into the environment prior to recycling, treatment, or disposal.

Department of Conservation & Natural Resources

This is a federal credit program to provide credit assistance to creditworthy borrowers for projects to maintain, upgrade, and repair dams identified in the National Inventory of Dams owned by non-Federal entities.

Department of Transportation

Advance innovative, integrated, and multimodal solutions to reduce congestion and the related economic and environmental costs in the most congested metropolitan areas with an urbanized area population of 1 million+.

Department of Transportation

The Office of the Secretary’s Safe Streets and Roads for All Grant program provides supplemental funding to support local initiatives to prevent death and serious injury on roads and streets, commonly referred to as “Vision Zero” or “Toward Zero Deaths” initiatives.

Department of Conservation & Natural Resources

This funding will be used for competitive grants through WaterSMART under the authority of Sec. 9504(a) of the SECURE Water Act for water management improvements that contribute to water supply sustainability, increase drought resilience, and that have environmental benefits.

Governor’s Office of Science, Innovation and Technology

As part of the Digital Equity Act programs, the State Digital Equity Competitive Grant Program is a $1.25 billion discretionary grant program distributed via annual grant programs over five years to implement digital equity projects. Eligible applicants include specific types of political subdivision, agency, or instrumentality of a State; Tribal governments; nonprofit entities; community anchor institutions; local educational agencies; and entities that carry out workforce development programs.

Governor’s Office of Science, Innovation and Technology

The ReConnect Program offers loans, grants, and loan-grant combinations to build infrastructure and install equipment that provides modern, reliable, high-speed Internet service in rural America.

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