With help from NRECA Broadband, electric cooperatives may now have more time to use federal funding for high-speed broadband projects through the Treasury Department’s $10 billion Capital Projects Fund.
On May 6, Treasury enabled CPF recipients to seek a six-month extension to spend remaining funds under the program, which has provided $878 million for 78 co-ops across 26 states to bring quality broadband to more than 200,000 unserved locations.
The decision came a little over a month after NRECA wrote to Treasury seeking an extension, pointing to natural disasters, permitting delays and other factors beyond co-ops’ control that would have made meeting the prior deadline difficult.
“Treasury’s decision will give co-ops relying on these funds more certainty as they work to deliver affordable, high-speed broadband to unserved rural communities,” said Louis Finkel, NRECA’s senior vice president of Government Relations.
The Capital Projects Fund was created in 2021 by the American Rescue Plan Act to give money to states, territories and tribal governments for critical capital projects to enable work, education and healthcare monitoring in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including providing broadband access in rural areas.
Co-ops had faced a Dec. 31, 2026, deadline to expend remaining CPF money. In March, NRECA sought a one-year blanket extension for all CPF funding recipients and sub-recipients due to concerns from members in several states over meeting that deadline.
Reasons for the extension request included slow program rollout at the state level, as well as federal and state permitting delays. Many co-ops were also hit by natural disasters such as ice storms that required them to rebuild large parts of their network.
In a win for co-ops, Treasury announced last week that it will accept requests for a six-month extension to use project funds by June 30, 2027. Extension requests must be submitted to Treasury by July 31, 2026.
The NRECA Broadband team was “instrumental to us receiving the valuable time extension of six months,” said Jeff Blagg, right-of-way engineer for Plumas Sierra Rural Electric Cooperative and Plumas Sierra Telecommunications. The Portola, California-based co-op was chosen to receive $67 million in grants for four middle-mile broadband projects.
“With broadband access now a necessity—much like electricity in the early 1900s—the [federal] funds will allow Plumas-Sierra Telecommunications to continue to bridge the digital divide in these rural areas that would otherwise remain unserved due to the high cost of fiber-optic cable construction in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Northern California,” Blagg said.
Molly Christian is a staff writer for NRECA.