There were several Open Houses held in January in regards to the Utah Rural Energy Diversification and Innovation (U-REDI) program. The open house went well and were attended by many community members. Now is the time to wait to see if the Build Back Better program, which is an under the U-REDI program will fund the USU-Eastern aviation and mechanics program at the airport. Castle Country Radio was able to sit down with Carbon County Commissioner Casey Hopes to discuss where the project sits at this time.

“The last time I was in we talked about the Build Back Better application. So the Build Back Better application kind of falls under the umbrella or the name of Utah REDI. It’s in the Office of Energy and so Carbon County’s portion of that is the airport and working with USU to bring their aviation and mechanics program here. We already have the flight program and that’s been a great boom to bring in more students and to help the university grow here in Carbon County,” said Commissioner Hopes. The funds from the Build Back Better program would help get this project off the ground. If the money is unattainable officials are still going to work towards getting the aviation and mechanic program established here in Carbon County.

This would open up so many opportunities for students, the university and the entire community. “The things that they’re training them on are turbine engines and different things, are things that we use in our community. Our power plants have turbine engines in them so potentially some of these students wouldn’t have to move off to say an airport somewhere else but they could be employed by the power plants or other places within our community,” explained Commissioner Hopes. The work to get the funding from the Build Back Better program would help solidify an aviation and mechanics program here in our area. This would be beneficial for not only our community but for the university as the program is only offered at the Logan Campus at this time.

Officials will not hear about the Build Back Better funding until this summer. “So that’s gong to be sometime mid-summer we’ll know on that. Here in a couple of weeks we’ll have the opportunity as a coalition to present in front of a whole bunch of philanthropists throughout the nation on a virtual visit and there’s a possibility that some of the philanthropists would be willing to donate to our project or the U-REDI project as a whole,” stated Commissioner Hopes. This would be wonderful if officials were able to secure funding now.

To learn more about the Utah Rural Energy Diversification and Innovation (U-REDI) on Facebook.