State Of Washington

State of Washington Department of Ecology, a U.S. state government environmental regulatory agency based in Lacey, Washington, acts as a federal grant recipient delivering environmental protection, water quality management, coastal resilience, habitat restoration, and natural resource stewardship services to federal agencies as the prime recipient on 693 federal grant awards (98% of its federal footprint). The agency does not hold federal contracts as a prime contractor and operates on a full-and-open (non-set-aside) basis across all funding streams.

The Department of Ecology's capability portfolio centers on water quality monitoring and protection, coastal zone management, habitat restoration, brownfields assessment and remediation, wetland conservation, dam safety coordination, air quality monitoring, hazardous waste management, and pollution prevention technical assistance. Representative work includes a $73.6 million NOAA Cooperative Agreement (Coastal Climate Resilience Initiative) to implement habitat restoration, shoreline realignment, and workforce development across Washington's coastal zone; a $51.4 million EPA Clean Water State Revolving Fund capitalization grant to provide low-interest financing to municipalities for wastewater and stormwater infrastructure; a $5.8 million NOAA grant for the Hoko Watershed Restoration Project (channel restoration, floodplain process restoration, riparian plantings) in Clallam County; and a $2 million EPA Brownfields Multipurpose cooperative agreement funding environmental site assessments and cleanup planning under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Customer concentration is heavily weighted to environmental and natural resource agencies. The Environmental Protection Agency Region 10 and the EPA broadly account for a dominant share of recent awards (208 and 95 awards respectively across the combined potential value figures shown, with 66% coverage of the award count). The Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued 74 awards; the Department of the Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service Region 1, 57 awards. By dollar concentration, NOAA and EPA awards drive potential value, though the source data reflect formula grants and cooperative agreements with combined potential value framing that does not map directly to typical prime contract metrics. Federal Emergency Management Agency (37 awards) funds dam safety, flood risk management, and disaster mitigation work.

The Department of Ecology's parent organization is the Washington Department of Public Institutions. The agency operates as a state government recipient of federal environmental grants and cooperative agreements rather than as a contract prime or sub, with no federal contract vehicle participation. Activity has grown modestly: 28 awards in 2022 rising to 48 in 2024, with 39 new awards in 2025. Fifty awards (combined potential value $228 thousand) reach ultimate completion within the next twenty-four months, representing typical grant recompete and renewal cycles rather than contract recompete cliff exposure.

The Department of Ecology administers multiple federal grant programs as a pass-through entity—notably the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (multiple annual capitalization grants totaling over $150 million across the 2022–2030 performance windows), which provides low-interest loans to municipalities and utilities for water infrastructure. Other significant recurring grants include EPA formula funding for air quality monitoring, nonpoint source pollution control, water quality management planning, underground storage tank programs, and LUST (Leaking Underground Storage Tank) cleanups. NOAA funds coastal zone management program administration, National Estuarine Research Reserve operations (Padilla Bay), and habitat restoration competitions. The agency also receives cooperative agreements from USGS for hydrography dataset development, the Navy for environmental document review, and the Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service for coastal wetlands planning and restoration grant administration.

Sub-award activity (2% of the footprint) routes federal funds to local health jurisdictions, tribal governments, land trusts, and non-profit conservation partners to execute field-level habitat restoration, wetland acquisition, and community-based stewardship work. Named sub-recipients include the Nisqually Land Trust, Skagit Land Trust, North Olympic Salmon Coalition, Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, and multiple county-level conservation districts. The Department of Ecology also houses and manages the Washington Conservation Corps, an AmeriCorps program providing youth environmental service training, which receives cooperative agreement funding from the Bureau of Land Management and AmeriCorps for ecosystem restoration, trail maintenance, and disaster recovery work.

The agency's grant portfolio skews toward water, coastal, and habitat domains under NAICS 922110 (Administration of Air and Water Resource and Solid Waste Management Programs) and related environmental management codes. No federal contract vehicles, GWACs, BPAs, or other IDIQs appear in the active prime footprint; the Department of Ecology's federal engagement is entirely grant and cooperative agreement–based.