Assets vary for different types of irrigation organizations

Irrigation organizations developed primarily in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to coordinate conveying water across arid farmland in the western United States. Today, they serve many parts of the country and range from small mutual landowner groups to large, formal, public and quasi-public institutions. The composition of assets held by different types of organizations reflects the context of the regional water resources and State water law in which the organizations were created. Survey results published in the USDA, Economic Research Service report Irrigation Organizations: Organization Types and Governance, published September 2025, show that unincorporated and incorporated mutual organizations, which do not have access to the same financing options as irrigation districts, have larger proportions of assets in infrastructure, such as dams, reservoirs, ditches, canals, and pipelines. For instance, infrastructure accounts for 61 percent of assets held by unincorporated mutual organizations, while financial reserves are a bigger portion of assets for types of organizations that are typically larger—23 percent for irrigation districts, but only 7 and 8 percent for incorporated and unincorporated mutual organizations, respectively.