Yakima County is feeling the love from the feds right now, and for good reason. There’s a steady flow of cash coming in for some key programs that are making local folks pretty darned happy.
Here are Five Fast Facts on fed money going to Eastern Washington:
- 🦹 Issue #1 - In August the county commissioners approved a new regional crime lab to be run by the sheriff. The lab will use high tech to investigate and prevent crime, and process evidence faster. Minority Report, anyone?
- 💰 The Funding - The funding for the new lab comes from the American Rescue Plan Act from early 2021. What funding doesn’t come from ARPA nowadays?
- 🔋 Issue #2 - Last month, the US Dept of Energy pledged $200M to two tech companies in Washington (Group14 Technologies and Sila Nanotechnologies) for development of next-gen EV batteries. The companies will use the cash to build manufacturing plants and create hundreds of jobs in the next few years. Music to our ears!
- ⚡ The Tech - These new batteries would use new silicon tech that would make their EV batteries more efficient and cheaper than today’s graphite tech. Cool, let’s make that work in our phones, too!
- 👮🌳 The Initiative - Between these two initiatives, the region’s biggest concerns are being directly addressed: crime, pollution, and the economy. Three for three ain’t a bad batting average.
🔥Bottom line: This seems like great news to us! Creating jobs, reducing crime, and protecting our amazing natural resources? Oh yeah, baby, let’s do it!
What do you think about these initiatives?
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