Infrastructure Investment

Van Ness Feldman has extensive public works infrastructure policy expertise. Our experience ranges from representing rail customers on national freight rail policy, to serving corporate and municipal clients on federal highway legislative initiatives and Clean Air and Clean Water Act policies.

The firm has expertise on a broad range of environmental issues associated with operating, siting, and construction activities related to transportation, energy and water infrastructure projects. We assist clients in acquiring grants, navigating agency rulemakings, compliance planning, facility permitting and siting, and enforcement proceedings.

Our public policy team has particularly strong professional ties to key infrastructure policy-makers, such as the staffs and senior members of the House Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce, Homeland Security, Resources, Transportation and Infrastructure and Appropriations Committees, and the Senate Finance, Environment and Public Works, Energy, Commerce and Appropriations Committees.

Representative Matters

An abbreviated list of Van Ness Feldman’s successes in the transportation and appropriations arenas is included below:

• Sonoma County Water Agency.  Working on behalf of the Sonoma County Water Agency to establish the Pacific Coastal Salmon Restoration Fund, which provides local governments and stakeholders in the States of California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and Idaho with funding for salmon conservation efforts. The program was initially funded at $54 million in FY 2000, and received $90 million in FY 200l, $110 million in FY 2002, $110 million in FY 2003, and $90 million in FY 2004 and FY 2005.
• North Slope Borough.  The Firm has represented the North Slope Borough of Alaska on a host of complex appropriations issues ranging from $7 million for compensation of Inupiat victims of radioactive Iodine-131 experimentation in the 1950s to $300,000 for an oil and gas assessment in the interior of Alaska, to securing $4 million to close and relocate a municipal landfill.
• Clean School Buses.  Van Ness Feldman's advocacy team represented a coalition of the nation’s leading engine manufacturers in securing broad support for millions of dollars in multi-year funding for testing new environmentally friendly transportation technologies and deploying clean, efficient school buses. The firm also advocated the Clean School Buses program, a priority for EMA, which appeared in the President’s budget and was funded through annual appropriations.
• City of Bellingham/Port of Bellingham Waterfront Restoration Project.  Working with and on behalf of Bellingham, Washington, Van Ness Feldman secured a $9.8 million project in the 2005 highway reauthorization legislation, SAFETEA-LU, recently signed into law. The Bellingham project received funding in both the House and Senate versions of the transportation reauthorization legislation. An additional $500,000 for the Bellingham Waterfront Restoration was provided in the Fiscal Year 2006 Transportation Appropriations measure.
• Washington State Rail Pool Car Program. The firm secured $2 million in earmarks in the Fiscal Year 2005 and 2006 Transportation Appropriations bills for an innovative program to secure refrigerated rail cars for Washington state.
• Ferry Funding.  Van Ness Feldman secured earmarks in both House and Senate Transportation Appropriations bills to fund research and ferry boat acquisition for a client in the Puget Sound totaling $4.8 million for Fiscal Year 2006. The funds will be used to research wake energy in Rich Passage and to ultimately purchase a low-wake ferries to restore fast ferry service between Seattle and Bremerton, Washington.
• Whatcom County Council of Governments.  The firm helped secure $3.2 million for a set of transportation projects along the border between Washington state and British Columbia.