WASHINGTON — South Dakota will receive $16.7 million in funding for rebuilding roads and adding lighting near Pine Ridge as part of President Biden’s infrastructure bill.

The projects, announced Thursday by Biden and U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, totaled $4.9 billion in funding nationwide from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda to 37 projects through two major discretionary grant programs, the National Infrastructure Project Assistance grant program and the Infrastructure for Rebuilding America grant program.

That total includes the $16.7 million in funding for the reconstruction of South Dakota Highway 73, which is intended to improve safety and access to the Pine Ridge Reservation project in South Dakota via the INFRA program.

The project will reconstruct approximately 8.7 miles of South Dakota Highway 73 and add lighting improvements along nearly one mile of South Dakota Highway 248 in Kadoka.

Improvements include expanding roadway shoulders, installing edge-line rumble strips, addressing deficient horizontal and vertical curves, installing culverts, and adding lighting. The project will expand the roadway, improve lighting and improve drainage to protect motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians. It will also replace outdated and degrading infrastructure along the corridor and help improve mobility and connectivity for the Pine Ridge Reservation.

“With this announcement, we are advancing projects so large, complex, and ambitious that they could not get funded under the infrastructure programs that existed prior to the Biden administration,” said Buttigieg in a statement. 

The Mega program, which was created by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and provides $5 billion in funding through 2026, is focused on projects that are uniquely large, complex and difficult to fund under traditional grant programs. For this round of funding, the Biden-Harris Administration is investing in 11 different projects that will generate national and regional economic, mobility, and safety benefits. 

The INFRA program, for which funding was increased more than 50% by the bipartisan infrastructure bill, also funds large scale, transformational infrastructure projects — for this round of funding the Biden-Harris Administration is investing in 28 projects that will improve the safety, efficiency and reliability of the movement of freight and people in and across rural and urban areas. Over half of the projects being funded through the INFRA program are in rural communities.

Two projects received awards from both programs, following through on the department’s commitment to invest in non-traditional, multimodal projects that have been neglected because of complications around how to fund them.