Why It Matters
The federal government generally defers to state primacy in surface and groundwater allocation, so states and local entities typically lead drought preparation and water management, while multiple federal agencies contribute to researching, monitoring, predicting, planning for, and responding to drought, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture provides the primary federal financial aid for agricultural drought losses. A new Congressional Research Service (CRS) report examines that division of responsibility across drought science, federal coordination, agricultural assistance, and water-project operations.
The report notes that variable precipitation and rising temperatures are intensifying droughts in some regions, while cautioning that observed changes are "highly season- and region-dependent." The 2023 Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5) found the Southwest was the only U.S. region where the total area of unusually dry soil moisture was increasing, and projected that warming is expected to amplify drought mainly through greater evaporative demand, surface-water losses, and declines in snowfall and winter snowpack.
The Trump administration put a proposed amendment to NCA5 out for public comment in August, stating that results dependent on certain high-emissions pathways "should not be used as expected, baseline, business-as-usual, likely, central, or policy-relevant federal planning futures."
The Big Picture
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) leads the interagency National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) and co-develops the U.S. Drought Monitor; the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) also research and monitor drought conditions. USDA provides the primary federal financial aid for agricultural drought losses, while the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) may face difficult tradeoffs at federal water projects, balancing water supply, flood control, hydropower, navigation, and environmental requirements during drought.
The report describes federal assistance as substantial but fragmented: many programs are not drought-specific and are limited in scope, and Congress has directed both Reclamation and USACE to plan for future droughts and incorporate forecast-informed reservoir operations at federally authorized projects.
Recent supplemental funding has included drought-related provisions in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (P.L. 117-58) and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (P.L. 117-169), which provided Reclamation $4 billion to mitigate drought impacts with priority for Colorado River Basin projects, as well as the Disaster Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2025, which provided $30.78 billion for agricultural losses including drought. P.L. 119-21, a budget reconciliation law, later rescinded and repurposed unobligated agricultural conservation funding from the 2022 act, removing its climate-change-specific direction.
In the 119th Congress, the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026 (H.R. 7567) passed the House on April 30, and the Senate agriculture committee considered a draft Agricultural Act of 2026 on Aug. 6, which the report says contained similar drought and water-management changes, though the report describes committee action, not enactment.
The Bottom Line
The report describes federal drought responsibilities as spread across NOAA, USDA, USGS, Reclamation, USACE, EPA, and other agencies, and says federal assistance is fragmented and often limited in scope, with USDA providing the primary federal financial aid for agricultural drought losses. The pending NCA5 amendment proposal and the rescission of climate-specific direction from conservation funding mean that the scientific baselines agencies use for drought planning could shift, a question Congress and the Trump administration have not yet resolved.
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