Port TIGER Grant

In 2015, Scott sent a letter of support and spoke personally with the Secretary of Transportation, Anthony Foxx to help the San Diego Unified Port District’s application for a TIGER grant to help upgrade the 10th Avenue Marine Terminal. In October of 2015, the Department of Transportation awarded a $10 million grant to the Port. San Diego’s economy depends on trade and the ability to efficiently move goods from the Port out into our communities and to the rest of the country. The improvements that will be made with TIGER Grant funds will increase work opportunities and benefit our economy.

Funding for Border Crossing

Since coming to Congress, Scott and the San Diego delegation worked together to provide funding for the San Ysidro and Calexico Border Crossings. Scott wrote letters to appropriators urging them to include funding for the projects. As a result funding for San Ysidro was included in two Omnibus spending bills and provided the project a total of nearly $500M. According to SANDAG, San Ysidro is the world’s busiest international land crossing, handling more than 11 million passenger vehicles, 68,000 buses, and 8 million pedestrians in 2012. SANDAG also estimates that delays and inefficiency at the border costs the region $7.2 billion in lost output and 62,000 jobs.

Highway Trust Fund Reauthorization

In 2015, Scott was an advocate for a long-term reauthorization of the Highway Trust Fund. He sent letters to Congressional leadership demanding that they stop providing short-term reauthorizations of the Trust Fund and instead provide certainty with a long-term authorization. As a result, in 2015, Congress passed a long-term reauthorization that will provide certainty to businesses working on infrastructure modernization and travelers who depend on safe roads, bridges, and tunnels to get to and from in their daily lives.

Mid-Coast

In 2015, 2016, and 2017, Scott has supported a federal full funding agreement between SANDAG and the DOT in order to match the local funding for the extension of the trolley system known as the Mid-Coast project. It was awarded in September of 2016. Since then, Scott has successfully pushed for congressional appropriations in the DOT Capital Investment Grant program in order to fulfill the annual funding needs, with the following successes: $50M in FY17, $100M in FY18, $100M in FY19. In response to the shortfall from FY17, Scott helped secure a supplemental funding increase of $80 million in FY18, an addition to the $100 million requested and allocated for the fiscal year, which brings total supportive funding to $330M. This project is the latest expansion of the trolley system which connects the two largest job centers in the county, universities, the VA hospital, etc.

Funded Water Resources Infrastructure Investments

Since coming to Congress Scott has been a leader in sponsoring legislation to improve water-use efficiency. With Scott’s advocacy and support, Pure Water San Diego was selected as one of 12 projects to apply for more than $2 billion in Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA)in 2017. The project also received approximately $9.2M in Title XVI funding in 2016 and 2017 combined. In April 2018, Scott wrote a letter to Council President Cole & Members of the San Diego City Council urging them to approve and certify the North City Project Final Environmental Impact Report (EIR). In November, the City Council approved the EIR and accepted a $614 million WIFIA loan from the EPA to begin the first-phase of construction. In 2019, Scott introduced the Ocean Pollution Reduction Act II (OPRA II). The bill provides regulatory certainty to the City of San Diego as it continues to make significant progress, as well as major investments in Pure Water. As droughts become more frequent, projects like Pure Water are critical to securing San Diego’s water independence.