Irrigation Efficiency Block Grants

Irrigation Efficiency Block Grants. I'm Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report. Ag producers in Oregon that are looking into irrigation efficiency upgrades will want to take advantage of a new program according to Stephanie Page, Renewable Energy Specialist with the Oregon Department of Agriculture. PAGE: These funds are federal stimulus dollars and they're distributed to the Oregon Department of Energy from the federal department of energy and so they need to go to energy efficiency projects and so the Oregon Department of Agriculture is working with the Oregon Department of Energy to distribute about a million dollars through different regions in Oregon to local organizations and those grants will be about 200-thousand dollars. Then the local organizations that receive those block grants can distribute individual grants to irrigators who want to save energy through projects like pump upgrades, adding variable speed drives to pumps – those kinds of things. If you are planning to apply Page says there are some things you need to be aware of. PAGE: There are some important criteria folks need to be aware of both if they are applying for a block grant or if they are an irrigator applying for an individual grant. The projects generally need to save about 2,930 kilowatt hours per thousand dollars of stimulus funds given. There are some tools available to help growers figure out how much a particular project is going to save and then they also need to be aware that if they have a construction contract for a project that is over $2000 the contractors need to follow prevailing wage requirements. The deadline for application is June 30 and you can access the documents necessary on the Oregon Procurement Information Network website. PAGE: It's kind of a 2-step process. For the block grants we're going to try to give out one block grant for each region of the state. We've divided the state up into 5 regions and we're hoping to give 200-thousand dollar grants to at least one organization or company in each region and then after that I think you're right it probably will be a first-come-first-served for those local organizations to distribute the cost-share payments to agricultureal irrigators. For additional information on clean energy, visit harvestcleanenergy.org. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network. www.harvestcleanenergy.org http://www.oregon.gov/DAS/SSD/SPO/eprocurement.shtml