Trump Signs Funding Bill with $8.5 Million for Tuscaloosa Airport Terminal Renovations

A now-signed Appropriations Bill to fund many parts of the federal government includes $8.5 million to renovate the terminal at the Tuscaloosa National Airport.

Republican Congressman Robert Aderholt celebrated the bill's passage through the House and Senate as well as its Tuesday night signing by President Donald Trump.

Aderholt said he requested funding for eight projects within Alabama in the Appropriations Bill, the second-largest of which is here at the Tuscaloosa airport.

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Aderholt will use the Federal Aviation Administration's Airport Improvement Program to finance the terminal upgrades, even as the city works to lengthen the runway.

Those projects and others are part of a serious effort to modernize the Tuscaloosa National Airport, which was first constructed 55 years ago.

Airport director Jeff Powell said both the runway extension and terminal renovations will improve the Gameday experience for athletic charters and allow leaders to continue pursuing the return of commercial air service to Tuscaloosa.

David Pass, the chair of the Tuscaloosa National Airport Advisory Committee, said Tuesday that the terminal renovations are one of the last dominoes to fall for the facility to begin recruiting airlines.

The Consolidated Appropriations Act funds the Departments of War, Labor, Education, Transportation, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development. It passed the Senate last week and cleared the House on Tuesday, before Trump signed it later that day.

The success of the relatively mundane bill was threatened last month amid demands from some lawmakers to strip funding for the Department of Homeland Security and ICE from the consolidated package.

Now that the amended Appropriations Act has been passed and signed, lawmakers have less than two weeks to hammer out an agreement on DHS funding before its regular budgets run dry, while much of the rest of the government is funded once more.

For more coverage of projects at the airport and other news in West Alabama, stay connected to the Tuscaloosa Thread.