“This is going to be big for the country and the Central Coast, most significantly in the money it brings and jobs, jobs, jobs,” said Salud Carbajal, as he Monday-morning quarterbacked the $1 trillion infrastructure bill signed into law by President Joe Biden last week.
It could have been a better bill, Carbajal critiqued, and he blamed “some colleagues on the other side of the aisle who didn’t want larger investments in green infrastructure provisions.” Nonetheless, “This was the greenest proposal ever seen,” he asserted.
In addition to the $110 billion the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act holds for highways, bridges, and roads, it has even more for rail transportation, electrifying school and public buses, internet connections, electric-vehicle charging stations, developing clean energy sources, and Superfund cleanup. Water was another important aspect, especially for drought-troubled states like California, with investments for clean water, wastewater, and replacing aging infrastructure, such as lead pipes.