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- Water 2025 Challenge Grant Program RFP is Now Online
News Release Archive
Water 2025 Challenge Grant Program RFP is Now Online
Media Contact:
Trudy Harlow, 202-513-0574, tharlow@usbr.gov
Avra Morgan, 303-445-2906, amorgan@do.usbr.gov
For Release: October 26, 2004
The Request for Proposals for the Water 2025 Challenge Grant Program for Fiscal Year 2005 is now available online at www.grants.gov (keyword search: Water 2025). Additional information about the Challenge Grant program, including frequently asked questions and answers, is available at www.doi.gov/water2025.
The Challenge Grant Program is seeking proposals from irrigation and water districts that want to leverage their money and resources in partnership with Reclamation, to make more efficient use of existing water supplies through water conservation, efficiency and water marketing projects.
The program is focused on achieving the outcomes identified in Interior Secretary Gale Norton's Water 2025: Preventing Crises and Conflict in the West, particularly through water conservation and efficiency, water markets and collaboration, with an emphasis on projects that can be completed within 24 months and that reduce future water conflicts.
"The goal of Water 2025 -- and these challenge grants -- is to support realistic, cooperative approaches and tools that have the most likelihood of successfully addressing water challenges in basins where crisis and conflict are preventable," Secretary Norton said. "Water 2025 is focused on local solutions in partnership with local water users."
The deadline for submitting proposals is January 21, 2005. Selection and award is anticipated by July 1, with implementation beginning in early August, 2005. However, depending on the number and type of proposals received, funding for some proposals selected in Fiscal Year 2005 may be awarded in the beginning of Fiscal Year 2006, to ensure efficient administration of all Challenge Grant projects.
The Water 2025 Challenge Grants encourage voluntary water banks and other market-based measures, promote the use of new technology for water conservation and efficiency, and remove institutional barriers in order to increase cooperation and collaboration among federal, state, tribal, and private organizations.
Eligible applicants include irrigation and water districts, tribal water authorities, and entities created under state law with water delivery authority, which may include water user associations, water conservancy districts, canal, ditch and reservoir companies, and municipal water authorities. Applicants must also be located in the western United States, as identified in the Reclamation Act of June 17, 1902, as amended and supplemented, specifically, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. Those not eligible for funding under the Challenge Grant Program include other state governmental entities, Federal governmental entities, universities, individuals, and other entities without water delivery authority.
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