ARRA

This is the latest in a series of blogs from West Virginia Student Reporter Abbey Hart on behalf of Bobby Lewis, State Director On November 16, 2010, a Construction Progress Meeting was held at the Newburg Town Hall. Although progress has been slower this past month, 76 percent of the project is...

USDA Rural Development has a long history of providing rural Americans with access to safe, sanitary and affordable housing. In interior Alaska, quality housing is a basic need. Temperatures regularly plunge far below zero, often to as cold as -60 F. Thanks to extra effort on the part of some...

November is National American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month and a fitting time to highlight USDA Rural Development’s recent projects on tribal lands. The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe of Mashpee, Massachusetts, are the direct ancestors of those who helped the Pilgrims on their arrival to New...

David Villano, assistant administrator of USDA’s Rural Utilities programs recently provided the keynote address to the 2010 Kansas Broadband Summit in Wichita. The Summit, entitled “A Fully Connected Kansas – Mission Possible” addressed topics of telemedicine, government services, economic...

After struggling for several years with a stagnant economy, the future is looking brighter for Paulsboro, New Jersey. Earlier this week, USDA Rural Development Deputy Under Secretary Cheryl Cook, Assistant Administrator for the Water and Environmental Program Jacki Ponti, and I attended an event to...

USDA Rural Development Deputy Under Secretary Vasquez and Congressman Bob Etheridge along with North Carolina Rural Development State Director Randall Gore visited the Middlesex Elementary School construction site in Nash County, North Carolina earlier this week. The project was funded through the...

Yesterday I accompanied Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan, State Director for Michigan Rural Development James Turner and Congressman Mark Schauer on a visit to the Center for Family Health (CFH) in Jackson, a city about 30 miles south of Lansing.

On the first day of October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month 2010, USDA Rural Development and Calais Regional Hospital came together with the mission of saving lives. The hospital’s outdated mammography machine was being replaced with a state-of- the-art digital mammography machine, funded in part by...

Greenwood County, Kansas is a fragile rural economy. Despite the current challenges of outmigration, unemployment and economic resources a bold step was taken recently as Madison Telephone, LLC broke ground to begin construction of a Fiber-to-the-Premises project in its certified service area, which...

Jefferson County in Mississippi, a rural county with a population of almost 10,000, was the site of an event last week commemorating a USDA Rural Development Community Facilities grant and loan combination that will bring a modern, state-of-the-art library to that county.