FY24 IIJA/IRA Bureau of Land Management Colorado (CO) Aquatic Resource Management | L24AS00216

Opportunity Information: Apply for L24AS00216

The FY24 IIJA/IRA Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Colorado Aquatic Resource Management opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number L24AS00216; CFDA 15.244) is a discretionary federal funding program intended to support aquatic resources work in Colorado on or benefiting lands and waters managed by the BLM. Awards are made as cooperative agreements, which generally means BLM expects to have substantial involvement during the project period (for example, collaborating on planning, technical decisions, coordination, or oversight) rather than simply issuing a pass-through grant with minimal agency participation. The overall activity category is Natural Resources, and the program is aligned with BLM aquatic resource management needs that may be supported by Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and/or Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funding.

Eligibility is limited to public and mission-driven entities, and the notice is explicit about who cannot apply. Individuals and for-profit organizations are ineligible for awards under this notice of funding opportunity (NOFO). Eligible applicants include state, county, and city or township governments; special district governments; independent school districts; public and state-controlled institutions of higher education; private institutions of higher education; federally recognized Native American tribal governments; other Native American tribal organizations; public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities; and nonprofits both with and without 501(c)(3) status (as long as they are not institutions of higher education in the non-501(c)(3) category). In practical terms, the eligible pool is broad across governments, tribes, universities, and nonprofits, but it excludes private individuals and commercial businesses.

A key restriction in the announcement is that this NOFO does not support projects that involve entities hiring interns or crews under the Public Lands Corps Act of 1993. The notice emphasizes that the Public Lands Corps Act is the only legislative authority that allows BLM to "hire" interns under that specific authority, and that youth-focused conservation corps proposals should be directed elsewhere. If an applicant is a Youth Conservation Corps or is proposing work centered on youth crews/interns under that framework, the NOFO instructs that those projects must instead be developed and submitted under NOFO 15.243, titled BLM Youth Conservation Opportunities on Public Lands. This matters for project design because applicants need to frame staffing approaches accordingly; if the project relies on interns/crews in a way covered by the Public Lands Corps Act, it is effectively out of scope for this particular funding opportunity.

The NOFO also calls out an important administrative and budgeting consideration for applicants that are part of a Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Units (CESU) network. CESUs are partnerships designed to facilitate research, assessments, monitoring, technical assistance, and education services. If a cooperative agreement is awarded to a CESU partner under a formally negotiated Master CESU agreement, and the project is consistent with the CESU purpose, the indirect cost recovery is capped. Specifically, indirect costs are limited to no more than 17.5 percent of the indirect cost base that is recognized in the partner's federally approved Negotiated Indirect Cost Rate Agreement (NICRA). Applicants are instructed to state whether their proposal furthers CESU purposes and, if so, identify which CESU Network should be considered as the host. This is essentially a compliance flag and a budgeting rule: CESU applicants need to plan for the indirect cost limitation and clearly indicate CESU alignment in the application narrative.

From a funding standpoint, the opportunity lists an award ceiling of $500,000. The posted record does not specify the number of expected awards in the provided excerpt, but the ceiling gives a sense of the maximum federal share per award under this announcement. The original closing date for applications was April 15, 2024, and the opportunity was created on December 29, 2023. Because the instrument type is a cooperative agreement and the subject area is aquatic resource management, projects typically associated with this kind of program include aquatic habitat restoration, watershed and riparian improvements, aquatic species conservation actions, monitoring and assessment of aquatic conditions, and technical planning work that directly supports BLM management objectives in Colorado. The exact priorities and eligible activities would normally be defined in the full NOFO narrative, but the headline framing clearly anchors the program in aquatic resource management outcomes rather than general recreation, construction, or youth employment programming.

In summary, this opportunity is a BLM Colorado natural resources funding program for aquatic resource management projects, offered via cooperative agreements up to $500,000, open to governments, tribes, universities, and nonprofits but closed to individuals and for-profit entities. It explicitly excludes proposals built around hiring interns or crews under the Public Lands Corps Act (directing those efforts to a separate BLM youth-focused NOFO), and it imposes a specific indirect cost limitation for CESU partners while asking applicants to identify whether and how their proposal advances CESU purposes and which CESU network should host the work.

• The Bureau of Land Management in the natural resources sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "FY24 IIJA/IRA Bureau of Land Management Colorado (CO) Aquatic Resource Management" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 15.244.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2023-12-29.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2024-04-15. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $500,000.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Special district governments, Independent school districts, Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized), Public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities, Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments), Nonprofits having a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Nonprofits that do not have a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education.

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