In the midst of infrastructure bill negotiations last year, with the pandemic still restricting in-person gatherings, lobbyist Martin T. Whitmer Jr. found a creative way to address lawmakers with a message from his client, the asphalt industry: He pulled a pair of folding deck chairs out of the trunk and invited legislators to meet him in a park near the Capitol.
“You just need to talk face-to-face on some issues, and that has been very, very helpful,” Mr. Whitmer said.
The strategy seems to have paid off. As part of the $1 trillion spending mandated by the infrastructure law that President Biden signed into law in November, the asphalt industry may end up with the biggest share. And while roads have likely always been the focus of legislation, lobbying efforts gave the industry a chance to promote what it saw as its environmental consciousness, making funding more attractive to lawmakers who were concerned that road construction was contributing to climate change.
According to the Eno Center for Transportation, a Washington-based nonprofit transportation think tank, the infrastructure package allocates at least $350 billion over five years to highways and bridges, compared to about $91 billion for public transportation. An additional $19 billion to the Department of Transportation to fund major projects, such as undersea road tunnels or bridge replacements, could increase pavement costs.
The highway and bridge budget will pay for engineers, steel, concrete and other structural elements. But lobbyists and transportation experts expect the majority of paving spending to go to asphalt, the material that makes up 94 percent of America’s roads and bridges (the other 6 percent is concrete).
According to lobbyists, congressional aides and others involved in the process, the asphalt industry’s funding victory appears to be the result of a “meat and potatoes” legislative priority aided by a politically far-sighted push by trade groups. Legislators realized that in a polarized political environment they could find common ground in repairing roads and bridges. Asphalt advocates, hoping to counter the idea that asphalt is bad for the environment, have presented the material as an unlikely ally in the fight against climate change.
“We are America’s #1 most recycled product,” said Jay Hansen, executive vice president of advocacy for the National Asphalt Paving Association, the industry’s premier trade group. A 21-page letter that the association sent to Mr. Biden’s transition team in late 2020, titled “Rebuild Better with Asphalt,” says asphalt is also critical to creating jobs and rebuilding the economy.
The first wave of funding under the infrastructure plan, which focused on several areas such as broadband, energy programs, and water services, was provided shortly after the bill was signed. The next wave, which contains tens of billions of dollars in highways and bridges, should be released when Congress approves the 2022 spending package, possibly next month. This funding will be distributed to cities and states, which will combine it with their own funding from fuel taxes and other fees to pay for construction projects, including paving.
The debate about how to spend the money is already heating up. A December memorandum from the Federal Highway Administration prioritizing improving existing roads over building new ones — a proposal that transportation industry leaders see as an attempt to limit the environmental impact of new construction — sparked protests from some state transportation officials, who said that guide cut them.
IN letter To Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Friday, more than two dozen Republican senators, including Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, a senior Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, said the memorandum proposal was in contrary to the intent of Congress in passing the bill. The senators have asked Mr. Buttigieg to rescind or revise the memorandum to better reflect the spirit of the law.
In the same time, Senate Democrats attempt to suspend the federal fuel tax opposition to rising consumer prices met with immediate opposition from the transportation industry. An industry trade group said in a letter to Senate leaders that even temporary tax cuts could cause the infrastructure package to collapse.
Despite ongoing political disagreements, asphalt producers say they are encouraged by the prospect of guaranteed funding for five years, which will allow them to hire new employees and expand.
“We have the ability to do more work,” said Dan Garcia, president of asphalt manufacturer CW Matthews of Marietta, Georgia. “So the capacity of the equipment, the capacity of the plant is really good for us.”
Mr. Garcia’s company operates 27 asphalt mixing plants across Georgia that crush rock from nearby quarries, combine it with sand and gravel into a mixture known as “aggregate” and cook it with asphalt, a viscous liquid made from raw oil. The asphalt mix is then loaded onto 18-ton trucks that deliver the mix to work sites.
With an expected 20 percent increase in funding at the Georgia State Transportation Department, CW Matthews’ largest client, Mr. Garcia now wants to add more than 100 employees to his 1,300-strong team.
Road groups have been urging the government to provide more permanent road funding well before Mr. Biden’s election. The most recent significant funding package, the American Surface Transportation Correction Act, or FAST Act, was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2015. The Trump administration has unveiled its own plan, but a series of “infrastructure weeks” has made little progress. eventually turned into a walking joke. By 2020, the pandemic has overtaken most other priorities.
Brief overview of the infrastructure bill
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Transport. The proposal will see tens of billions of dollars in new federal spending transition to roads, bridges and transport programs. Amtrak will see its biggest injection of money since its inception, with funds allocated to programs designed to ensure safe commuting for pedestrians.
Climate. Funding will be provided better prepare the country for global warming. The Forest Service will receive billions of dollars to reduce the effects of forest fires. The bill includes $73 billion to upgrade the national power grid so it can transmit renewable energy.
Resources for low-income communities. A new $2 billion grant program is expected to expand transportation projects in rural areas. The bill will also increase support for Native American communities by providing $216 million to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. for climate resilience and adaptation efforts.
In December 2020, shortly after Mr. Biden’s victory, the National Asphalt Paving Association sent a letter to the president-elect to “Make it better than asphalt.” The arguments about the need to finance new roads and bridges were not new, but the positioning of asphalt as an environmentally friendly material was new.
Mr. Whitmer, who knew some of the transportation advisers on the presidential transition team, recalled being encouraged by the response. “They didn’t know that asphalt is the most recycled product,” he said, consultants told him during informal discussions.
However, the overall environmental impact of asphalt is less rosy. The new roads are designed to simply ease the city’s traffic jams. bring more drivers, adding to carbon emissions. Processing a wider range of materials in asphalt, such as shredded material, used tires or soybean oil, and lower temperature cooking of asphalt components to reduce emissions are promising but not yet widely adopted.
Mr. Garcia’s plants still produce relatively warmer “hot mix” asphalt pavement and typically contain 20 to 40 percent recycled asphalt pavement in their new materials – more than a standard American road contains.
Asphalt itself is a polluting hydrocarbon. As well as a recent study by Yale University engineers suggested that asphalt pollutes the air when exposed to bright sunlight. (The Asphalt Association questioned some of the findings of the Yale study, saying that “asphalt materials from exploited sidewalks are not significant sources of urban smog.”)
Last April, after Mr. Biden unveiled work plan which prioritized the rehabilitation of roads and bridges, transport groups began to coordinate their actions more closely. According to Jeff Davis, senior fellow at the Eno Center, the mentality was that “the tide lifts all boats”. He added: “They all agreed that more money would help everyone.”
To make the lobbying more tangible, Vulcan Materials, the nation’s largest producer of building aggregates, invited Representative Carolyn Burdo, a Democrat from Georgia, to their Norcross quarry in that state, and Senator Bill Hagerty, a Tennessee Republican who had a partial college degree, shoveling asphalt to tour a quarry in Nashville.
In Washington, Mr. Whitmer pulled his chairs out of the trunk and began recruiting members of Congress for coffee in the park. During video calls, Mr. Hansen showed two-inch squares of hard asphalt mix. “You use it every day, but you don’t realize it,” he said.
Last April, when the White House and some lawmakers began defining infrastructure in a broad senseSome industry leaders and lobbyists have worried that money that has historically gone to highways is being diverted to projects such as federally subsidized housing. An industry proposal to raise federal taxes on fuel to help cover the new spending was rejected by Senate leaders. The entire process was hampered by partisan polarization in Congress.
But the issue proved important enough for enough members on both sides that a bipartisan deal was struck that provided significant new money for needs such as public transportation and better access to broadband as well as roads.
“To bring both sides together to agree on something is good. I wish we could see this more often,” Mr. Garcia said on a recent morning in Adairsville, Georgia, to the sound of truck equipment as his crew laid asphalt along Route 140. “It’s not only affecting us—these truck drivers , quarry – but it’s obviously progress, isn’t it?”