Available Grants

• Identify and evaluate alternatives to water shutoffs for non-payment of bills, assessing their effectiveness and impact on utility financial sustainability and water service continuity.
• Assess the effectiveness of billing practices in helping keep customers from accruing debt that leads to shutoffs.
• Analyze how billing practices, penalties, and alternatives to shutoffs influence customer payment behavior, including timeliness, default, or participation in assistance programs, and how these effects vary across income levels and utility sizes.
• Evaluate the role of third-party resources in reducing arrearages and late payments and avoiding shutoffs.
• Develop case studies illustrating how utilities have implemented alternative strategies, highlighting their key hurdles and lessons learned.

WRF RFP Contact: Sydney Samples

For instructions on how to submit proposals, refer to these instructions or this video.

The Potential Participants listed at the bottom of this page have indicated interest in participating in this research. This information is updated frequently as utilities are encouraged to volunteer throughout the RFP cycle.

• Identify ways for utilities to overcome key barriers to the adoption of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) and Agentic AI, including actionable guardrails such as integrating cybersecurity protocols into operations, implementing secure development practices into model training and deployment, and adopting and applying the National Institute of Standards and Technology AI risk management framework core functions, which help ensure secure AI deployment (NIST 2016).
• Identify a minimum of four unique and meaningful GenAI pilot applications within the water/wastewater sector and implement each application at two additional utilities. Document the transfer process, data governance and data quality requirements, operational insights, lessons learned on reproducibility, and early impacts of each demonstration. One application should focus on knowledge transfer and training.
• Catalogue Agentic AI applications currently in use within the water/wastewater sector and capture key lessons learned and early impacts from each application.
• Reproduce one low-effort Agentic AI application at another utility and document the transfer process and lessons learned.

WRF RFP Contact: Sydney Samples

For instructions on how to submit proposals, refer to these instructions or this video.

The Potential Participants listed at the bottom of this page have indicated interest in participating in this research. This information is updated frequently as utilities are encouraged to volunteer throughout the RFP cycle.

• Assess the scalability, operational feasibility, and economic viability of emerging reverse osmosis concentrate (ROC)/brine minimization and zero liquid discharge (ZLD) and minimal liquid discharge (MLD) technologies across diverse California conditions, including energy, greenhouse gas, regulatory, and source-water considerations.
• Identify practical pathways for technology adoption by evaluating trade-offs, early-adopter case studies, implementation bottlenecks, and future research needs to guide utilities and regulators.

• Demonstrate that ultrafiltration (UF) systems consistently achieve measurable virus removal.
• Identify and evaluate reliable surrogate indicators for ongoing monitoring to support virus removal credit for UF systems.

• Develop a clear framework to guide reverse osmosis concentrate (ROC) management strategies in California, focusing on when treatment of ROC discharges is beneficial or necessary.
• Identify targeted research needs to support regulatory readiness, contaminant reduction, and effective decision-making for ROC management.

• Support California’s water reuse goals by facilitating the statewide implementation of diverse direct potable reuse (DPR) projects while maintaining the full strength and integrity of DPR regulations.
• Define the data and methods needed to demonstrate alternative treatment equivalency for DPR in a manner that ensures strong public-health protection.