USGS Water Use Data and Research Program Announcement for Fiscal Year 2022 | G22AS00089

Opportunity Information: Apply for G22AS00089

The USGS Water Use Data and Research (WUDR) Program Announcement for Fiscal Year 2022 is a federal funding opportunity from the U.S. Geological Survey's Water Availability and Use Science Program (WAUSP) designed to strengthen how water-use information is gathered, managed, and shared across the United States. It offers a two-year cooperative agreement specifically for State water resource agencies that collect, estimate, or manage water-use data. The overall aim is practical: help states improve the availability, quality, compatibility, and delivery of water-use datasets so they can be more easily compared across jurisdictions and reliably used for planning, science, and public decision-making. The program is also explicitly tied to the Department of the Interior's Secretarial Priorities, meaning the work supported is expected to contribute to broader national objectives around water management, preparedness, and reducing conflicts that can arise as environmental conditions and demands change.

This opportunity is authorized under Public Law 111-11 (SECURE Water Act), Subtitle F, Section 9508, which established the National Water Availability and Use Assessment Program. A major requirement that comes with this authority is data openness and usability: state agencies receiving WUDR funding must make resulting water-use or water-availability datasets publicly available in a machine-readable open format. In practice, that means the information should be structured so it can be ingested and integrated into USGS systems and combined with other relevant datasets that USGS maintains. The emphasis is not only on collecting numbers, but on producing data products that are standardized enough to support national-scale analysis and transparent enough to be reused by water managers and the public.

The WUDR program sits within a longer-running USGS effort to understand how the nation uses water. USGS has produced national water-use estimates since 1950, traditionally published in reports at five-year intervals. Those estimates cover multiple categories of use such as irrigation and public supply and rely on consistent scientific and statistical methods to create comparable summaries over time. The grant opportunity reinforces that national mission by helping states assemble and report the underlying water-use information that feeds into these larger assessments. Better state data ultimately improves the national picture of where water is used, in what quantities, for what purposes, and how those patterns shift over time, which is critical for evaluating water availability, quality, timing, and demand.

From an implementation standpoint, the cooperative agreement structure signals that USGS expects active collaboration rather than a hands-off pass-through award. The USGS National Water Use Science Project operates through Water Science Centers in all 50 states, U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia, and water-use data collection is framed as a partnership activity involving state and other federal agencies, tribes, water authorities, counties and local communities, corporations, academia, and the private sector. The announcement highlights relationship-building and communication between water-use scientists and partner agencies as a core value, not an afterthought. In other words, the funding supports both the technical work of improving datasets and the coordination work needed to make those datasets consistent, shareable, and useful at multiple scales.

Key administrative details include the opportunity number G22AS00089 and a discretionary funding category, with awards made as cooperative agreements under CFDA 15.981 (Natural Resources). Eligible applicants are state water resource agencies that collect or manage water-use data. The listed award ceiling is $125,000, and the original closing date for applications was March 31, 2022, with the opportunity created on December 7, 2021. While the announcement references examples of previously funded projects in general terms, the main focus remains on supporting state-level collection, estimation, compilation, and reporting of water-use information, with a strong expectation that results will be delivered in open, machine-readable formats suitable for integration into USGS national datasets and long-term water-use assessments.

• The Geological Survey in the natural resources sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "USGS Water Use Data and Research Program Announcement for Fiscal Year 2022" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 15.981.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2021-12-07.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2022-03-31. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $125,000.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: Others.

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