The White House will give out more than $14.5 billion in awards and grants to 36 groups in 12 states to help communities that have been hurt by changes in the coal and energy sectors.
According to a White House fact sheet released Thursday, President Obama’s administration will hand out $14,546,457 for partnerships in 12 states and tribal nations. The grants and awards are coming through the Partnerships for Opportunity and Workforce and Economic Revitalization, or POWER, initiative.
The program aims to retrain coal workers for work in another field.
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The grant awards include $1.2 million to turn a former school into a substance abuse treatment center for women in Kentucky, $1.3 million to improve Internet connections near Montrose, Colo., $2 million to the states of Ohio and Kentucky to retrain displaced coal workers and $600,000 to help West Virginia farmers increase agricultural production at surface mine sites.
The initiative is described as a “down payment” on the president’s POWER+ plan, a $10 billion portion of Obama’s fiscal 2016 budget request to Congress. The administration decided to spend the $14.5 billion because the coal regions’ economic situation was so serious that it needed an immediate injection of existing money, according to the White House.
The funding comes from the Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration, the Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration, the Small Business Administration and the Appalachian Regional Commission.
