![]() ![]() "It's a perfect example of what shouldn't be happening with this new money."īiden's administration is writing the check, but it has little say over Alabama's project, which is funded through a special account for highways in the region. "It's a true dinosaur of a pork barrel project," said Nelson Brooke of Black Warrior Riverkeeper, a local environmental group. Environmentalists say the Beltline would encourage sprawl and threaten wild areas - the antithesis of Biden's green agenda. Opponents of the Beltline, meanwhile, are incensed that a gusher of cash is set to revive a dormant project that even local planning officials once ranked as a middling priority. "This is the continuation of a promise made," said Ron Kitchens, chief executive officer of the Birmingham Business Alliance, an economic development group. At the southern end of that range lie the blue-collar exurbs and rural hamlets north of Birmingham. Other Beltline supporters portray the federal support as money still owed to Alabama from Democratic President Lyndon Johnson's 1960s War on Poverty, which promised to help impoverished residents of the Appalachian mountains. Shelby declined to comment for this story. The Beltline will get its funding all the same. Shelby voted "no" on Biden's infrastructure package, arguing that it should have included military projects. senator, Richard Shelby, a Republican who has worked for decades to carve out Washington dollars for the Beltline. It's also a big win for Alabama's senior U.S. That $1 trillion deal - the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act - allowed Democratic President Joe Biden to fulfill a campaign promise to fix the nation's crumbling bridges, roads and airports. At least $369 million in federal funding for the Beltline is headed Alabama's way from a massive infrastructure package approved by Congress in November. Barely a mile of it has been started, and Alabama officials haven't provided the billions it would take to finish it.īut the bulldozers could soon be moving again, thanks to U.S. Critics have labeled the project a "dinosaur," a "zombie" and a "black hole". PALMERDALE, Ala., March 30 (Reuters) - North of Birmingham, a gravel road bed slices through a series of steep ridges, part of a stalled effort to carve a 52-mile freeway around the rural fringes of Alabama's largest city.Ĭonstruction stopped five years ago on the road, dubbed the Birmingham Northern Beltline, after federal funding ran out. ![]()
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