The Current
Reclamation's Biweekly Newsletter

October 5, 2018

The Bureau of Reclamation is proactively addressing drought. Through its Drought Response Program, Reclamation is supporting a proactive approach to drought by providing assistance to water managers to develop and update comprehensive drought plans and implement projects that will build long-term resiliency to drought.

Through contingency planning, Reclamation provides financial assistance on a competitive basis for applicants to develop a drought contingency plan or to update an existing plan. Most of these plans are structured to address the three following questions:

• How will we recognize the next drought in the early stages?
• How will drought affect us?
• How can we protect ourselves from the next drought?

The planning process is also structured to encourage an open and inclusive planning effort that employs a proactive approach to build long-term resiliency to drought.

Reclamation also funds projects that provide for drought resiliency. Drought resiliency can be defined as the capacity of a community to cope with and respond to drought. These projects assist communities prepare for and respond to drought. Typically, these types of projects are referred to as "mitigation actions" in a drought contingency plan.

Reclamation will fund projects that will build resiliency to drought by:

• Increasing the reliability of water supplies
• Improving water management
• Providing benefits for fish and wildlife and the environment

Reclamation continues to undertake emergency response actions under the Drought Response Program to minimize losses and damages resulting from drought. Emergency response actions are crisis driven actions in response to unanticipated circumstances.

Eligible emergency response actions are limited to temporary construction activities and other actions authorized under Title I that do not involve construction of permanent facilities, including water purchases and use of Reclamation facilities to convey and store water.

To learn more about the drought program, please visit www.usbr.gov/drought.

Prize Competition

The Bureau of Reclamation is launching a new prize competition seeking solutions to provide direct current power of up to 20 watts for electronic instruments on hydropower generating units’ rotating shafts. Power sources for electronics on rotating shafts presently available include batteries and contact solutions. However, existing technologies for these types of power sources are limited with respect to operation, installation, maintenance or other factors. Thus, new solutions are needed to power these instruments, which will be installed permanently on the rotating shaft to collect continuous data of generator operation and performance. Reclamation is partnering with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Bonneville Power Administration on this prize competition. To learn more about this prize competition and other competitions Reclamation has hosted, please visit https://www.usbr.gov/research/challenges/index.html.