Washington’s Irrigation Efficiencies Grants Program is a water savings program that works with Washington’s agricultural irrigators and water purveyors. The State Conservation Commission (SCC) works with conservation districts to provide financial incentives to irrigators and water purveyors willing to install efficient irrigation systems that save water. The program works to restore instream flows, reduce demand on aquifers, mitigate for drought vulnerability, enhance water quality, retime water availability, and increase of-farm productivity.

Grants issued through the IEGP fund conservation district technicians who provide direct assistance to irrigators and water purveyors by assessing water savings projects along with the design, development, and administration of each project. Technicians also write irrigation water management plans for project recipients to ensure wise management of the new practices. Monitoring is also a key element to ensuring success.

The Irrigation Efficiencies Grants Program (IEGP) has been saving water for people, farms, and fish, since 2002. The program was created during the legislative session in 2001. It made funding available for conservation districts to conserve irrigation water through efficiency upgrades to conveyance systems(ditches) and application systems (flood/furrow/sprinkler). Water rights associated with the water savings were transferred to the state’s Trust Water Rights Program for instream flows only. The saved water was to stay instream for the benefit of salmonids listed as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The target area of priority was identified as the 16 Salmon Critical Basins as designated in the 1999 Washington Statewide Strategy to Recover Salmon.

Through adaptive management and additional water resource concerns, the target area expanded to include other water short basins until 2021. This program was funded by a legislative appropriation to the Department of Ecology’s Water Resource Section and contracted through an interagency agreement to the Commission. Last biennium, the appropriation came directly to the Commission with the inherited proviso language focused on instream flow enhancement only. This biennium, the Commission revised its proviso language in order to address other water resource issues.

Since its inception, participating conservation districts have included: Asotin County, Cascadia (Chelan County), Clallam, Columbia, Kittitas County, North Yakima, Okanogan, Pomeroy (Garfield County), South Yakima, Underwood, Walla Walla County, and Whatcom.