LandFlex Grant Program Guidelines

The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) is administering the LandFlex Grant Program (LandFlex) through DWR’s Sustainable Groundwater Management (SGM) Grant Program. LandFlex (referred to as Ag Drought Relief) will award funds authorized by the California Budget Act of 2021 (Stats. 2021, ch. 44, § 25). This document contains DWR’s Guidelines and scoring criteria (Guidelines) for LandFlex.

Climate change means that California needs to plan for a hotter, drier future. Long-term drought, fueled by climate change, has adversely affected the State’s water supplies, which includes groundwater availbility. In response to the Governor’s California’s Water Supply Strategy, Adapting to a Hotter, Drier Future, DWR will launch the LandFlex Program as a new and innovative tool to protect vulnerable drinking water wells. LandFlex will provide incentives to farmers to limit groundwater pumping in areas near communities reliant on vulnerable drinking water wells before they go dry. LandFlex combines traditional short-term fallowing incentives with the elimination of long-term unsustainable groundwater pumping, a unique approach to groundwater resilience.

LandFlex is a program that will provide $25 million in block grants to local government agencies to grant to farmers who limit agricultural water use. Local government agencies will work directly with farmers in critically overdrafted (COD) basins (as identified in Bulletin 118) to identify lands that would reduce pumping impacts to nearby drinking water wells. Through financial incentives to farmers, LandFlex will provide multiple community benefits such as drinking water well relief, groundwater overdraft prevention, and climate resilience.