The Department of Energy has announced that two tribal nations and four states will receive the first round of Grid Resilience State and Tribal Formula Grants funding, totaling $50 million. The program aims to modernize the electric grid to reduce impacts due to extreme weather and natural disaster and ensure the reliability of the power sector’s infrastructure. The tribal nations awarded the first round of funding for Fiscal Years 2022 and 2023 are the Kumeyaay Indians of California – they will receive $182,000 for projects that provide benefits to the tribal community, including reduced greenhouse gas emissions, fewer and shorter outages, and opportunities for tribal workforce development… The Navajo Nation will receive $1.8 million – they plan to use the funding to reduce the number and duration of outages caused by natural hazard disruptions by hardening power lines, facilities, substations, and other systems.
Republican members of the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources plan to look into U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s ties with a progressive indigenous environmental group from her home state of New Mexico that advocates for a halt on oil and gas production on publicly-owned lands, citing potential ethical misconduct. Republican Rep. Bruce Westerman from Arkansas, who chairs the committee, addressed a letter to Haaland on Monday, with several Republican members requesting access to documents pertaining to her and her daughter Somah’s interactions with the Pueblo Action Alliance. Somah reportedly has collaborated with the group and actively protested in Washington D.C. against the development of fossil fuels.
Those are your headlines at this hour. I’m Colette Keith in the KIPI News center.
