Assistance program
WaterSMART (Sustain and Manage America’s Resources for Tomorrow)
$573.7 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Bureau of Reclamation, Interior, Department of the
- Assistance
- Cooperative Agreements
- CFDA number
- 15.507
- What it does
- To provide cost-shared funding for various types of water management improvement projects, including: 1) projects that save water; increase the use of renewable energy; and accomplish other sustainability benefits; 2) small-scale water efficiency projects that have been identified through previous planning efforts; 3) collaborative planning and design projects to support water management improvements; and 4) collaboratively developed restoration projects, nature based solutions, water conservation projects, and infrastructure improvement projects with significant ecological benefits.
- Who benefits
- General public, entities with water or power delivery authority, state, county, and local governmental entities, and Tribes located in eligible states and territories previously described in applicant eligibility. The general public, agricultural, municipal and industrial water users; irrigation or water districts; and state governmental entities with water or power delivery authority, located in the states identified in the Act of June 17, 1902.
- Who applies
- Applicants must be located in the Western United States or United States Territories specifically: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming (the “17 Western Statesâ€), Alaska, Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, the Virgin Islands, or Puerto Rico. Category C Applicants: Nonprofit conservation organizations submitting an application for a project to improve the condition of a natural feature without a category A partner must demonstrate that entities described in Category A in the applicable service area have been notified of the project and do not object. Category A and B applicants are eligible under all funding opportunities under WaterSMART Grants. Category C applicants are only eligible under the Environmental Water Resources Projects funding opportunity. Applicants must be located in the Western United States or United States Territories specifically: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming (the “17 Western Statesâ€), Alaska, Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, the Virgin Islands, or Puerto Rico.
- Authorized by
- Section 9504(a) of the Secure Water Act, Subtitle F of Title IX of the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, Public Law (P.L.) 111-11 (42 United States Code [U.S.C.] 10364), as amended.
- Public Law 111-11, Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, Title VI, Subtitle A, Sec. 6001-6003 (16 USC 1015 et seq.)
- Program site
- http://www.usbr.gov/WaterSMART/grants.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