Page 18: of Marine News Magazine (March 2022)

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Column

Infrastructure

Funding Opportunities for Small Ports By James Kearns, Special Counsel, Jones Walker LLP

In the William M. (Mac) Thornberry National Defense by an independent audit which is acceptable to MARAD.

Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2021, Congress The bene? ts of this change to the PIDP’s set-aside became amended the Port Infrastructure Development Program apparent in the ? rst ? scal year of its implementation. On (PIDP) administered by the U.S. Maritime Administration December 23, 2021 U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete (MARAD) to reserve to smaller ports 18% of the amounts Buttigieg announced the award for FY 2021 of more the appropriated for grants under the PIDP, and increased this $241 million in funding under the PIDP for 25 projects. percentage to 25% in the NDAA for FY 2022. This replaced Of these 25 grants, 15 were made to small ports under the the minimum dollar threshold for PIDP grants of the lesser set-aside in a total amount of approximately $42.5 million. of $10 million or 10% of the total amount appropriated for These grants ranged from less than $1.2 million to $4.1 the PIDP for a ? scal year. Congress has recently been appro- million. With only one exception, each of these awards was priating substantially more than $100 million for the PIDP for 100% of the amount requested by the applicant. Prior each year. This has undoubtedly been a positive development to the change in the PIDP set-aside approach, none of these for the nation’s ports generally, but it effectively meant that applications would have been eligible for an award under a grant requested from the PIDP set-aside would need to the PIDP without the reduction in the required minimum be at least $10 million. The infrastructure projects of many grant amount made by the appropriations act for FY 2021.

inland and smaller coastal ports frequently do not meet this The revised PIDP set-aside protects the grant requests threshold. Although Congress has also been reducing the of smaller ports in another way as well. No fewer than 232 minimum grant size to $1 million in its annual appropria- applications were submitted to the PIDP for FY 2021, re- tions acts, the underlying statute for the PIDP has remained questing grants totaling more than $3.6 billion for proj- unchanged, leaving smaller ports uncertain as to what the ects of more than $9 billion. Under the pressure of such minimum grant amount would be from year to year. a strong need for funding of port infrastructure projects,

With the change made by the FY 2021 NDAA, for a the relatively modest requests of smaller ports might easily project to be eligible for a grant from the PIDP set-aside, it have been passed over for much larger projects without the need only be carried out by a port that has had an average protection of the PIDP set-aside.

of less than eight millions tons of cargo for the immedi- In the recently enacted Infrastructure Investment and ately three calendar years from the time the application is Jobs Act (IIJA), sometimes referred to as the Bipartisan submitted. The tonnage is to be determined using data of Infrastructure Law, Congress sought to address the imbal- the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, or from data provided ance between the need for port infrastructure funding and © Jon / Adobe Stock 18 | MN March 2022