Build Kansas panel forwards grid-resiliency and airport grant applications to DOE; approves budget request and minutes

The Build Kansas Hub steering committee reviewed applications for state matching grant support for electrical grid upgrades and airport infrastructure and agreed to forward the proposals to federal reviewers for consideration.

The committee considered a package of 40101d grants — the federal "preventing outages and enhancing the resilience of the electric grid" program — and a set of airport infrastructure requests from the Build Kansas Matching Grant Fund. Staff said the items cover rural utilities and small municipal airports across Kansas and asked the committee to advise forwarding the applications to the U.S. Department of Energy and the Federal Aviation Administration as appropriate.

The review matters because many Kansas communities rely on aging grid components and small airports for critical services. Committee presenters said several distribution and transmission lines, poles and substations are decades old and that the grants target reliability improvements to reduce outages that affect hospitals, emergency services and businesses.

Lynn Ritz, director of government relations for the Kansas Corporation Commission, said the 40101d round followed a larger set of submissions and that DOE has approved past packages. "This is our second round with the…