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The 2022 Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration’s (PHMSA) Safety & Modernization Grant Program application deadline is on July 25, 2022. This grant program will distribute up to $200 million each year for the next five years to publicly and community owned natural gas distribution systems for the repair or replacing of aging infrastructure and the purchase of safety and methane emission mitigation technologies.

PHMSA recently updated their Notice of Funding Opportunity in response to APGA’s request to extend the period of performance for proposed projects. This section now reads “The period of performance is 36 months from the effective date of the award. However, applicants may request a period of performance up to 60 months if they can justify that their projects will require additional time. Examples of possible reasons for needing a period of performance longer than 36 months may include time required to secure qualified contractors, time required to design the project, coordination with other utilities in the same rights of way, and limited construction season due to weather.”

Also, many APGA members have expressed frustration with ongoing user-support questions with SAM.gov. PHMSA has offered the following guidance: “We encourage applicants to visit Grants.gov, download the attachments and start working on the application as much as they can. Once they have obtained a UEI, they can simply upload the attachments along with their project and budget narratives.” PHMSA is also in the process of obtaining an individual federal contact at SAM.gov to address these issues.

PHMSA plans to update the FAQs associated with the program this week. They will be added both to PHMSA’s grant webpage and APGA’s webpage as well. Both can be found at
https://www.phmsa.dot.gov/grants/pipeline/natural-gas-distribution-infrastructure-safety-and-modernization-grants and at
https://apga.org/resources/phmsa-grant.

For questions on this article, please contact Erin Kurilla of APGA staff by phone at 202-464-2742 or by email at ekurilla@apga.org.