2021 Local Entity Closing Disbursement Program

On July 6, 2021, the IID Board of Directors authorized a final disbursement program to award grants up to $425,000 within the local community. These disbursements will complete the LE mitigation funding program, which has disbursed approximately $49 million to date.

The program outlined by the Board of Directors is intended to minimize administrative grant requirements and expenditure reporting/tracking by capping grant awards at $5,000, with eligibility limited to non-profit organizations and public agencies.

By July 31, 2021, each director will propose up to 17 grant recipients within their division, or within IID’s water service area, to address their local community needs. Once the eligibility of all nominated entities has been verified, a consolidated list of grantees will be presented to the board for final approval.

Recipients must be in good standing with the California Secretary of State and the US Internal Revenue Service, and must submit all relevant documentation requested on the 2021 Local Entity Closing Disbursement Program Interest List.

In order to close out the LE fund, any unused LE monies or accumulated interest remaining after the 2021 Closing Disbursement Program has been completed, up to $200,000 (subject to availability), will be dedicated to the city of Holtville’s pool rehabilitation project.

• 2021 Local Entity Closing Disbursement Program - Overview & Interest Form [PDF]
  
• W9 IRS Form [PDF]

Local Entity Program Background
Through the first 15 years of the IID/San Diego County Water Authority water transfer agreement, fallowing was utilized as the primary means of generating conserved water for transfer, mainly to lessen the environmental impacts to the Salton Sea.  The IID initiated its last fallowing program for this 15-year period in 2016, which was also the last year in which fallowed water was transferred to SDCWA.  In 2017, IID has completed its transition from fallowing to efficiency-based conservation measures to create water for transfer to SDCWA, and the mitigation deliveries to the Salton Sea that are based on fallowing concluded by year-end (with the actual end of fallowing coming earlier in June 2017).

The Local Entity was created by the Revised Fourth Amendment to the water transfer agreement to quantify third-party socio-economic impacts of fallowing; however, this proved to be a contentious process with ongoing analytical disputes regarding the severity of these impacts within the Imperial Valley.  In 2007, IID and SDCWA executed a settlement agreement to resolve this longstanding dispute, and $50 million was made available to mitigate the direct and indirect impacts of the mandated fallowing within the IID water service area, with $30 million provided by SDCWA and $20 million by IID.

Since 2008, the IID Board of Directors, acting as the Local Entity, has disbursed nearly $32 million in mitigation funding to farm service providers whose businesses were affected by fields contracted for fallowing by IID in support of the water transfer and mitigation programs. IID has also funded nearly $11 million to community business endeavors to support the creation and retention of local jobs.  Finally, over $6 million of additional funding was also provided for special projects, including assisting in the reopening of a beef processing plant by One World Beef in Brawley, the development of a processing plant (and related sugarcane crop economy) by California Ethanol & Power and the Imperial Valley Food Bank.

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