Perez seeks $15.5 million for Southwest Washington projects

On Monday, July 28, Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA-03) announced she has requested Fiscal Year 2026 funding for more than a dozen vital community improvement projects in all seven counties across Washington’s Third District. Most of the projects have already passed the House Appropriations Committee, and all projects, including the pending requests, total $15,589,144 in potential federal funding coming back to Southwest Washington.

This spring, Perez opened her Community Project Funding (CPF) application and selected projects based on eligibility, geographical diversity, and community impact and support. Members of the House can submit CPF requests to the House Appropriations Committee. As a member of the House Appropriations Committee, Perez will continue advocating for the projects.

The CPF requests respond directly to some of the most pressing needs in Southwest Washington to deliver support for high-impact, community-led projects to support water, wastewater, and electricity infrastructure; fire protection and public safety; and timber, fishing, and farming communities.

“Every day across Southwest Washington, good people are sitting down and coming up with solutions for their communities instead of waiting for the federal government to tell them they need to jump through more hoops and wade through more red tape to help their neighbors,” said Perez. “The Community Project Funding process is a way I can recognize these community-led efforts and proactively bring dollars home for projects that might have otherwise been underappreciated or difficult for small, rural communities to fund in another manner. Last congress, I successfully urged my bipartisan colleagues to give these projects the respect they merit, and I secured $21 million for projects in every county across our district, many of which have now broken ground. I’m now fighting on the Appropriations Committee to bring dollars home for more community projects that will grow our rural economies and that represent the nuts and bolts of good governance from local meat processing for farmers, to ag education for high school students, to water and energy investments for ratepayers.”

In the 118th Congress, Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez secured more than $21 million in Fiscal Year 2024 Community Project Funding for 15 projects across every county in Southwest Washington.

From this amount, $500,000 in funds will be used for Wahkiakum County to purchase roughly 500 acres of the Upper Grays River Community Forest. Completing this first acquisition will facilitate local forestland ownership and management that will ensure sustainable economic, environmental, and community benefits.

Dramatic changes in the commercial timber economy have fragmented the forests, prohibited community access, and threatened watershed health. Community members currently have a limited say in how the forests in the Grays River Watershed are logged and maintained.

This month, $500,000 for this project passed the House Appropriations Committee, as part of one of the Fiscal Year 2026 government funding bills. The legislation still needs to pass the House and Senate.