The Urban and Multibenefit Drought Relief Program offers financial assistance to address drought impacts through implementation of projects with multiple benefits. For communities, including Tribes, facing the loss or contamination of their water supplies due to the drought; to address immediate drought impacts on human health and safety; and to protect fish and wildlife resources plus other public benefits, such as ecosystem improvements.
Under the Budget Act of 2021(Stats. 2021, ch. 69, § 112), financial assistance will be provided by DWR to deliver grants for interim and immediate drought relief to urban communities and for multibenefit projects. DWR is combining the funding into one Urban and Multibenefit Drought Relief Program. This Grant Solicitation makes approximately $190 million in drought relief funding available. A set-aside of at least $50 million will be made to support Underrepresented Communities and Native American Tribes (Tribes). An applicant must be an existing grantee of the Proposition 1 IRWM Disadvantaged Community Involvement (DACI) program to apply for the Underrepresented Community set-aside.
Eligible applicants are public agencies and utilities, colleges and universities, mutual water companies, 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations, regional water management groups as defined in Section 10539 of the Water Code, federally recognized California Native American Tribes, and non-federally recognized Native American Tribes on the contact list maintained by the California Native American Heritage Commission.
For the purposes of this Grant Solicitation, “project” means all planning, design, engineering, acquisition of real property interests, construction and related activities undertaken to implement a discrete action to be funded. Eligible project types include hauled water, installation of temporary community water tanks, bottled water, water vending machines, emergency water interties, new wells or rehabilitation of existing wells, construction or installation of permanent connection to adjacent water systems, recycled water projects that support immediate relief to potable water supplies, fish and wildlife rescue, protection, and relocation, and drought resiliency planning (not applicable to Multibenefit Drought Funds).
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