Industry Brief #3 Recovery Is Infrastructure
- 5 days ago
- 6 min read
What Changed Since Brief #2, & What to Do About It
Week of July 20, 2026
Since Brief #2, the federal picture has moved fast, and mostly in one direction. The decisions that determine whether urban and salvaged wood gets recognized are being written and enacted right now. One bill has become law. Another is close to markup. A third is being drafted this month. A fourth is fighting to keep its funding. Meanwhile the cities have stopped waiting, and what they are building is the strongest argument we have.
The housing bill is law
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act became law on July 11. It is the most significant federal housing law in more than thirty years, and it leans hard on modular and factory-built construction, the off-site, engineered space where wood products and mass timber belong.
More building means more demand for wood. The law assumes that wood comes from traditional forests.
New York City has already written the other assumption into policy. Its first Urban Forest Plan, released April 21, directs the City to explore circular construction guidelines that incentivize the use of locally salvaged wood in City projects. The largest city in the country has put recovered wood into how it builds. Federal housing rules can follow that example.
What to do: the fight now moves from Congress to HUD, which will write the modular housing rules. As that guidance develops, press for urban and salvaged wood to count wherever the rules address domestic, sustainable, or lower-carbon building material, and cite New York City as public sector precedent that already exists. This is a slower venue than the others, so it is a watch-and-comment job, not an emergency.
The farm bill markup is next
This is the one that cannot wait. The Senate released its farm bill draft, the Agricultural Act of 2026, on June 23. Chairman Boozman has said the markup will come before the August recess, most likely the week of July 27, once Senator McConnell is back and the committee is at full strength. The committee splits 12 to 11, so every vote counts.
Markup is the moment the base text hardens. After it, changing a word gets far harder.
Title VIII already updates the Wood Innovations and Community Wood Facilities programs and modernizes Forest Inventory and Analysis, but it still does not name urban, salvaged, or reclaimed wood. Cities are building the processing capacity these programs exist to fund, and the programs cannot see it.
What to do: contact the Senate Agriculture Committee this week (see below). Ask that Sections 8251 and 8252 name urban and salvaged wood as eligible and a priority, and that the Forest Inventory and Analysis update count it. Send specific text, not general support, and send it before markup.
The Senate is writing the transportation title
The House passed its version, the BUILD America 250 Act, out of committee. The Senate is writing its own now, and the highway title, which carries the Transportation Alternatives Program that funds street trees, runs through the Environment and Public Works Committee. Current law expires September 30, so the text is being drafted this summer.
While it is open, the eligibility language can still be shaped.
What to do: ask the Environment and Public Works Committee (see below) to make wood recovery and higher use an eligible activity under the Transportation Alternatives Program, so trees taken down in road and right-of-way work can be routed to recovery instead of the chipper.
Research and i-Tree funding are on the line
The capacity to measure and support this work is under the most pressure. The FY27 budget would eliminate State and Private Forestry, the channel that carries urban and community forestry, and cut the research that proves higher-value wood use pays. i-Tree, the Forest Service tool communities use to measure and value their trees, is losing its funding, and urban forestry groups are running a letter campaign to save it, with letters due July 31.
A tool that is defunded cannot count the resource, and a resource that is not counted does not get funded.
What to do: two things, both soon. Add your voice to the i-Tree letter campaign before July 31. And in the fall appropriations round, defend Forest Inventory and Analysis, the research account, and State and Private Forestry by name. A short-term funding bill may push the appropriations fight to December, which keeps the window open but does not settle it.
The cities are already moving there
Every ask in this brief lands harder when it is backed by what cities have already been moving towards. The demand for a federal category is not theoretical. It is being written into municipal plans, budgets, and procurement standards right now.
New York City released its first Urban Forest Plan on April 21. The plan traces the life of a city tree from seed to salvage, and it names wood reuse directly. Goal 3.7 directs the City to explore expanding wood reuse citywide and to foster new related industries, led by the Department of Sanitation with Parks, Design and Construction, and Economic Development as partners. It calls for colocating milling, chipping, composting, and biochar operations, selling reclaimed material as timber and other products, generating a revenue stream from City wood recycling, developing economic and workforce opportunity in reuse industries, and exploring circular construction guidelines that incentivize locally salvaged wood in City projects. The timeline is short term, under five years.
Columbus, Ohio, is further along. Its Department of Recreation and Parks already runs an in house recovery operation using City owned portable sawmills, a vacuum drying kiln, and a municipal woodshop. City crews remove roughly one thousand trees a year, and recovered material returns as benches, tables, desks, shelving, and signage installed in parks, recreation centers, and administrative offices. The City's 2025 to 2030 wood recovery plan scales that operation with production rising from about thirty thousand board feet a year toward seventy five thousand, internal billing that recovers the cost of milling, drying, and fabrication, twenty to forty thousand dollars a year in avoided disposal cost, full cost recovery projected by year three, and surplus reinvested in tree planting.
These are not outliers. Baltimore, Denver, Fort Collins, Minneapolis, and Milwaukee have run urban wood programs for years. Pittsburgh, Ann Arbor, Detroit, Lansing, Memphis, and San Diego are building them now and dozens are digging in deep to see how they too can do it. The pattern holds across city size, region, and politics.
Taken together, that is a demand signal federal programs cannot currently see, because urban and salvaged wood is not a recognized feedstock category. Cities are committing to recover, process, buy, and account for a material that federal statute does not name. Closing that gap is the whole ask.
What to do: use your own city. If your community has a plan, an ordinance, a shop, a contract clause, or even a log yard, describe it in one short paragraph and send it with every message below. Committee staff discount general advocacy and pay attention to constituent programs with numbers attached. If your city has nothing yet, the New York City plan is public and gives local officials language they can adopt.
Who to Contact and What to Say
These decisions are made by people who answer to constituents. Start with your own delegation, then reach the committees and offices writing the text. Use the official web contact forms, since Senate offices rarely publish direct email.
Who to contact | On what | How to reach them |
Your own U.S. senators and representative | Everything below; as a constituent your voice counts most | |
Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) | Michigan forestry, forest products, and domestic supply chains | |
Senate Agriculture Committee: Chair John Boozman (R-AR), Ranking Member Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) | Farm bill Title VIII: Wood Innovations (8251), Community Wood (8252), and FIA. Markup imminent. | |
House Agriculture Committee: Chair Glenn “GT” Thompson (R-PA), Ranking Member Angie Craig (D-MN); Conservation and Forestry Subcommittee | House farm bill and conference with the Senate | |
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee: Chair Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Ranking Member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) | Surface transportation highway title and the Transportation Alternatives Program (TAP) | |
House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee: Chair Sam Graves (R-MO), Ranking Member Rick Larsen (D-WA) | BUILD America 250 Act; TAP eligibility in conference | |
USDA Forest Service Wood Innovations Program: Brian Brashaw, Assistant Director; Collin Buntrock, National Grant Manager | Wood Innovations and Community Wood grant criteria; recovered feedstock eligibility | fs.usda.gov (Wood Innovations contacts page)brian.k.brashaw@usda.govcollin.buntrock@usda.gov(715) 499-5290 |
i-Tree letter campaign: Urban and Community Forestry Society (UCFS), Leslie Berckes, Executive Director | Save i-Tree funding; letters due July 31 | |
House and Senate Appropriations, Interior and Environment subcommittees | FY27: protect FIA, the research account, and State and Private Forestry | appropriations.senate.govappropriations.house.govand through your own delegation |
General Services Administration (GSA) and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) | Federal procurement and ROAD to Housing Act implementation | gsa.govhud.govcomment on rules at regulations.gov |
Michigan state and local: DNR / State Forester, your state legislators, city and county officials | State forestry, procurement, and local recovery programs |
Agency staff and committee leaders change, so confirm names on the linked pages before sending anything cold.
The most effective message
Keep it about implementation and timing. Your community already produces a valuable domestic resource every time it takes a tree down, and the recovery system that turns that resource into product is exactly what these bills either fund or ignore. Cities from New York to Columbus have already decided that resource is worth recovering. Federal policy has not caught up to them.
Ask decision-makers to name urban and salvaged wood, fund the programs that measure and process it, and do it before these windows close. The choices being made this month will set the terms for years.
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