Assistance program
Water Desalination Research and Development
$31.9 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Bureau of Reclamation, Interior, Department of the
- Assistance
- Cooperative Agreements
- CFDA number
- 15.506
- What it does
- There are three goals for the program: (1) augment the supply of usable water in the United States; (2) understand the environmental impacts of desalination and develop approaches to minimize these impacts relative to other water supply alternatives; (3) develop approaches to lower the financial costs of desalination so that it is an attractive option relative to other alternatives in locations where traditional sources of water are inadequate. The three principal parts of the program are: (1) perform research on desalination technologies and related issues to advance the state of the art forward (research and studies), (2) conduct development and demonstration activities to test technological advancements, confirm economics, and gain public acceptance (development projects), and (3) support operation and maintenance at the Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility (BGNDRF)
- Who benefits
- Individuals, State and local entities, public nonprofit institutions/organizations, other public institutions/organizations, Federally recognized Indian Tribal Governments, small businesses, profit organizations, private nonprofit institutions/organizations, quasi-public nonprofit institutions/organizations and other private institutions/organizations.
- Who applies
- Any responsible source, to include individuals, State and local entities, public nonprofit institutions/organizations, other public institutions/organizations, Federally recognized Indian Tribal Governments, small businesses, profit organizations, private nonprofit institutions/organizations, quasi-public nonprofit institutions/organizations, and other private institutions/organizations may submit a proposal which will be considered by Reclamation. Foreign entities are not eligible for funding. Federal agencies are not eligible to apply.
- Authorized by
- Public Law 111-11
- Program site
- https://www.usbr.gov/research/dwpr/index.html ↗
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments
