A coalition from Alaska titled Southeast Conference was chosen – which is comprised of Coastal Alaska regions including Southeast Alaska, Prince William Sound, Southwest Alaska, and the Kenai Peninsula was one of the sixty finalists announced for the U.S. Economic Development Administration’s $1 billion “Build Back Better Regional Challenge”. The challenge aims to boost economic pandemic recovery and rebuild American communities, including some that have been grappling with decades of disinvestment. The goal is to develop a viable and sustainable mariculture industry in Alaska.
Of those sixty finalists, the application period for Phase 2 ended in the middle of March for them to further develop their proposed projects and strengthen their regional growth clusters.
Tim Dillon, Executive Director of KPEDD, lays out the timeline for what happens next:
“We are currently waiting for some information back from the federal government on what questions they have. I actually am in Anchorage next week and at Juneau at meetings hoping that we’ve got some of those questions back from the feds that we’re able to weed out and say, ‘this is what we meant here’, or ‘I understand we can’t do this, let’s do that.’ We’re expecting by the middle of April to have a list of questions that we’ll be responding back and forth. Then, it’s our understanding that if we were to become funded, that we would probably know sometime in August. The key, though, is whether we get funding or not, we really want to get funding to try and help these folks. Even if we don’t get funding, we have been able to gather a tremendous amount of information and knowledge on what the problem is and what can do to try and help enhance it.”
Dillon states that if this doesn’t work from a funding perspective:
“We can always talk to other potential funders. This would be the biggest chunk that we could get, but it’s great to see a project where the, hopefully we have the state and the feds and even the Denali Commission has come to our support at this stage. We were able to go and speak with them about some match money to try and help with this.”