Department Of Water Resources Oregon

Department Of Water Resources Oregon, a U.S. state government entity headquartered in Salem, Oregon, is a federal grant recipient that delivers water resource management, dam safety, and hydrological monitoring services to the Bureau of Reclamation, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the U.S. Geological Survey. The agency operates as a prime grant recipient (99% of recent awards) on a non-set-aside basis and holds no federal contract vehicles; its federal footprint is driven almost entirely by federal grant awards rather than competitive procurements.

OWRD's primary customer concentration sits with the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Reclamation and FEMA. The top customer by award count and potential value is the Bureau of Reclamation, with eighteen awards carrying $5.5 million in combined potential value, anchored by water monitoring and streamgauging work across Oregon's river basins. The second major customer cluster is the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which funds OWRD's state-level dam safety programs under the National Dam Safety Program (CFDA 97.041); thirteen FEMA grant awards carry funding for dam inspections, emergency action planning, and rehabilitation of high-hazard potential dams. The U.S. Geological Survey's Office of Acquisitions and Grants provides six cooperative-agreement awards for maintenance and expansion of Oregon's participation in the National Ground-Water Monitoring Network (NGWMN). Together, these three customer sources account for 63% of OWRD's recent awards.

OWRD's capability portfolio centers on specialized water monitoring, regulatory administration, and dam safety infrastructure. Representative work includes a $1.052 million sole-source purchase order with the Bureau of Reclamation for streamgauging services across the Malheur, Burnt, Powder, and Crooked River basins (awarded September 2022, running through August 2027); a $1.468 million sole-source purchase order for the Umatilla Basin Water Monitoring Program, monitoring exchange water and McKay Reservoir storage releases to support irrigation and fisheries management (awarded September 2022, running through August 2027); a $5.537 million FEMA project grant for rehabilitation of high-hazard potential dams statewide (awarded September 2024, running through September 2027); and a $739 thousand FEMA project grant for dam safety initiatives including inspections and emergency action plan development (awarded May 2024, running through May 2026). OWRD also holds ongoing cooperative agreements with USGS to operate water-level and water-quality monitoring stations feeding data to the National Ground-Water Monitoring Network, with awards spanning two-year performance periods at approximately $15 thousand per year per agreement. Six awards reach ultimate completion within the next twenty-four months, carrying combined potential value of $2.5 million and representing recompete opportunity.

Activity volume has been modest and uneven — five awards in 2022, declining to two in 2023, recovering to four in 2025 — reflecting the episodic nature of federal grant cycles and the absence of recurring contract vehicles in OWRD's portfolio. Across SCI-reportable service contracts (a subset of OWRD's federal revenue, covering contracts above the $150 thousand threshold), OWRD invoiced $576 thousand in FY2022 across 4.6 federal FTEs and $383 thousand in FY2023 across 2.4 FTEs, with no SCI-reportable invoicing in FY2024. Median government-paid hourly rates on SCI records run $62.24 per hour, with senior labor pricing through $88.98 per hour. OWRD performs all reported work with its own staff and carries no subcontractor engagement on federal service contracts captured in SCI. In its subgrant role, OWRD subcontracts to the State of Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife on fish passage feasibility work at Keno Dam under a USGS-administered cooperative agreement focused on anadromous fish recovery in the Upper Klamath Basin.