Bipartisan letter sent to federal agencies, calling on them to fund Colorado River drought-response projects
Colorado’s entire congressional delegation, Republicans and Democrats alike, is calling for the release of $140 million in frozen funds for Colorado River water projects.
In January, the last days of the Biden administration, the Bureau of Reclamation awarded funding for 17 projects as part of the federal drought-response effort in the overstressed Colorado River Basin. Three days later, President Donald Trump issued sweeping executive orders that aimed to reshape federal spending priorities to match his administration’s policies. The Colorado projects were caught in the maelstrom.
Colorado water managers were thrown for a loop. It stalled hoped-for progress on everything from irrigation ditch repairs to fish passage projects. Supporters of the Western Slope’s effort to purchase powerful Colorado River water rights at Shoshone Power Plant saw the promise of $40 million evaporate.
The state’s federal lawmakers want that to change.
“We ask you to move forward with obligating the remaining $140 million worth of Bucket 2 projects in Colorado – not just for the benefit of our state, but for the resilience of the entire Colorado River Basin,” the lawmakers said in a joint statement.
The lawmakers who signed onto the letter were Democratic Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper; Republican Reps. Lauren Boebert, Jeff Crank, Gabe Evans and Jeff Hurd; and Democratic Reps. Jason Crow, Diana DeGette, Joe Neguse and Brittany Pettersen.
They sent the letter Monday to the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Reclamation, the agencies in charge of awarding the funds.
The 17 projects proposed work across Colorado’s Western Slope, which is part of the Colorado River Basin. Colorado River water helps supply farmers, cities, industries and ecosystems across the state.
They identified rivers and flood plains where habitats were declining, deteriorating headgates and ditches that needed repair, dams that could be removed and other ways of improving Colorado’s aging water system.
So far, the Trump administration has announced that it intends to award funding for two of the projects. The Orchard Mesa Irrigation District, based in Palisade near Grand Junction, received up to $10.5 million to convert open canals into pressurized pipelines, improving water delivery efficiency and helping endangered fish in the process.
Another project is set to receive $1.5 million to install advanced water metering technology and real-time remote monitoring systems in the Orchard Mesa and Grand Valley area.
The federal lawmakers want to receive the rest of the promised funding, which totals $140 million, so Colorado can better respond to increasingly unpredictable water supplies and prolonged drought in the basin.
“By making the Colorado River Basin’s headwaters more resilient, these Bucket 2 projects will also help manage the impacts of the unrelenting 25-year drought affecting the Colorado River Basin,” wrote the Colorado lawmakers.
Jan. 17 was an exciting day for some Colorado water managers. They could finally speak publicly about the influx of federal funding heading their way.
The Bureau of Reclamation, under former President Joe Biden, awarded up to $152 million for the 17 Colorado projects as part of the Upper Colorado River Basin System Conservation and Efficiency Program. The awards totaled $388.3 million, and the rest of the money was promised to tribal nations and other states in the Upper Basin, including New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
The federal dollars come from the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration’s landmark climate change and health care bill.
Quick jump back in time: Federal lawmakers put $4 billion for drought response in the Biden-era spending package in 2022. Water watchers know that, in 2022, Colorado River Basin officials were in crisis mode as they tried to respond to dry conditions and historically low water levels in the basin’s main reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell.
The Upper Colorado River funding program, part of Bucket 2 spending, was tied to the federal response in the basin, which provides water to 40 million people across the West.
In the Upper Basin, “Bucket 1” spending helped relaunch the System Conservation Pilot Program, which paid farmers to cut their water use. That program lapsed this year after Congress did not reauthorize it in December.
Fast forward to Jan. 20: President Donald Trump stepped into office and issued a slew of executive orders. One, called Unleashing American Energy, focused on energy but cast uncertainty over spending under the Inflation Reduction Act, and thus the water and drought-response funding.
Past regulations were burdensome and impeded the development of the country’s energy resources, according to the executive order.
“It is thus in the national interest to unleash America’s affordable and reliable energy and natural resources,” the order said. “This will restore American prosperity – including for those men and women who have been forgotten by our economy in recent years.”
Initially, it was unclear what funding would be impacted or what would be spared, congressional staffers said at the time.
Although the federal government announced the grants, this was just the first step in the process. The money wasn’t “obligated” or contracted out – a point at which the federal government has historically been required to uphold its end of the funding bargain. The Trump administration froze some obligated funding as well.
Another highly anticipated opportunity, called Bucket 2W, never materialized. This tranche of money was intended to fund long-term voluntary reductions in water use.
Since then, many grant recipients have been left in the dark about the status of their awards.
In Glenwood Springs, the $40 million award brought the Colorado River District within inches of its Shoshone funding finish line.
The district and its partners on the Western Slope have spent years, decades some say, trying to purchase Xcel Energy’s powerful Colorado River water rights at the Shoshone Power Plant to strengthen the region’s water security. With the federal funds, they had raised about $97 million of the $99 million needed for the purchase.
“The impacts of this prolonged drought demand proactive federal investment in permanent solutions, not just crisis response,” General Manager Andy Mueller wrote in a prepared statement Monday.
Looking ahead, he’s optimistic that the Department of the Interior would move forward with the funding.
“We believe this project stands on its own merit. It is locally led, broadly supported and will strategically leverage federal funds to deliver long-term results,” he said.
In southwestern Colorado, people from nearly 40 organizations teamed up to jointly apply and were awarded $25.6 million for 17 local projects. If they can’t get the funding, they will work together to seek other funding sources, said Steve Wolff, general manager of the Southwestern Water Conservation District.
Each of the 15 unfunded projects help with water supply security, and they come from local collaborations. They’ll help the Colorado River Basin withstand drought, said Chané Polo, executive director of Colorado Water Congress.
“Without the federal investment, we lack the ability to make the necessary improvements needed to these projects to help withstand the overall impacts of drought,” she wrote in an email to The Colorado Sun Monday. “Not just in Colorado, but throughout the Colorado River Basin. As a headwater state, resilience in Colorado means resilience for the whole basin.”
