Funding uncertainty, river droughts, and 120-year-old infrastructure: Hickenlooper hears Western Slope water woes in his visit to Garfield County

Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper stood right beside the flowing Colorado River as he responded to concerns about its future from water conservation leaders on the Western Slope. 

The senator’s Tuesday visit to Two Rivers Park in Glenwood Springs was just one of several stops on his tour across Northwestern Colorado to discuss things like public land management and housing challenges.

Those in attendance relayed their hopes and water concerns to him — ranging from a warming climate to the freezing of already-awarded federal grants for water projects by the Trump administration.

The Colorado River serves 40 million people across seven states. Roughly 65% of the river’s natural flow originates on Colorado’s Western Slope.

The river — and the communities it serves — is currently facing several challenges, many of which are related to increasing temperatures, prolonged drought, lower snowpack levels, more stream regulations, and increased water demand. Those conditions are only exacerbated by the state’s aging infrastructure. 

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“Our infrastructure is over 120 years old. We’ve got leaky, open canals that lose significant volumes of water,” said Jackie Fisher, district manager for the Orchard Mesa Irrigation District. “Combined with the persistent drought, this aging and inefficient infrastructure threatens the reliable delivery of water to agricultural producers and undermines the resiliency of rural communities. We need the federal investment. It’s critical for our modernization.”

At the time of Tuesday’s discussion, several projects providing potential solutions to these challenges faced timeline uncertainty under the Trump administration. Roughly $151 million in funding for conservation projects on the Western Slope were frozen in January by Trump’s executive order to “immediately pause disbursement of funds” from the Inflation Reduction Act — which a federal judge has since declared unlawful.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation had awarded the funding to projects throughout the Colorado River’s Upper Basin during the final days of the Biden administration.

“Contractors and nonprofits and communities don’t trust federal grants, which is where the majority of our funding (comes from) for projects that we need to keep the Colorado River flowing and keep our local rivers and waterways clean and healthy,” Vanessa Logsdon, executive director for the Blue River Watershed Group, told Hickenlooper. “If that funding isn’t trusted or isn’t available just because of the whims of an administration, then we’re looking at a really huge cut in our ability to mitigate the effects of climate change.”

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A few municipalities had already seen a return of federal project funding since the initial freeze, to which Hickenlooper advised that they “spend fast.” Others were forced to pause their projects during a crucial time for the Colorado River Basin’s dwindling water supply.

“These funding buckets are critical for us to find something that can address the aging infrastructure,” said Steve Pope, manager of the Uncompahgre Valley Water Users Association — one of the largest converters of Colorado River water and operators of one of the state’s largest Bureau of Reclamation projects. “For many years — 20 out of the last 25 — we’ve gone to percentages. We do not have a full water supply given the climate. So for them to make that type of an investment and then pump and then not know that they’re going to get water, it’s tough. It doesn’t pencil out for them.”

In January, the Colorado River Water Conservation District was awarded $40 million toward the purchase of the Shoshone water rights from Xcel Energy — part of the $388 million awarded to projects throughout the Colorado River’s Upper Basin through the Inflation Reduction Act. The River District’s campaign to purchase the $99 million water rights would secure the river’s oldest and largest non-consumptive rights and ensure the continuation of its in-stream flows.

The $40 million was also placed under review by the Trump administration’s attempts to “claw back a lot of that money,” according to Hickenlooper.

“That $40 million was dedicated. It was authorized,” he said. “We thought it went through all the processes of being appropriated. You don’t think they can stop that. It should break the law.” 

On April 15, just hours after his visit to Glenwood Springs, a federal judge in Rhode Island ruled that Trump’s funding freezes were unlawful under Democrats’ climate and infrastructure spending laws and issued a nationwide preliminary injunction ordering agencies like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as well as Interior and Energy departments, to resume disbursing money.

With the combined efforts of local, state and federal partners, the return of federal funding would mean the Colorado River District is once again within reach of the $99 million needed to secure the Shoshone water rights by the December 2027 closing date. Several other projects across the Western Slope will likely resume work on their projects as funding is reinstated.

“We’re going to continue to work within that deadline. There are quite a few milestones to hit, but we remain hopeful,” Colorado River District deputy director of public relations Lindsay DeFrates told The Aspen Times on Wednesday.

Colorado leaders urge a speedy decision over Colorado River Compact negotiations

Some of the attendees at Hickenlooper’s roundtable at Two Rivers Park also expressed concern over Colorado River Compact negotiations, which will determine how the river’s water is allocated.

Divided between the upper and lower basins by a 1922 compact, the river’s annual flow has decreased over time due to drought, climate change and growing agricultural demands. Now, the 2007 operational guidelines for Lake Powell and Lake Mead — which were established when both reservoirs were full — are being renegotiated to determine a new long-term management plan for the reservoirs beyond 2026. In November, the Bureau of Reclamation proposed five options for this management.

“When we look out on the river right now … you can see the fluvial deposits on the side that aren’t covered with that snow pack that’s already gone because we didn’t get a lot of snowpack,” said Sean Norris, president of the Grand Valley Irrigation Co. “That’s not a high river. We don’t have a lot of water right now.”

Hickenlooper said the original negotiation deadline set by the Bureau of Reclamation was December 2024, though now the conversations will likely extend through July.

“I’m frustrated at the pace of those negotiations,” Hickenlooper said. “Not much has changed in the last nine months.”

If the seven states from the Colorado River’s lower and upper basins failed to reach a consensus, Congress could step in with a binding legislative solution — a route many Colorado conservation and agriculture leaders have said they don’t want.

“Our concern right now is in these compact negotiations, should they fail, then it’s going to go to Congress, and Congress is going to decide the fate of water in Colorado,” Norris said. “We want to make sure that you do not compromise and sacrifice our small population of people for a larger population of people, just because it’s the politically easy negotiation to get.”

Though Hickenlooper agreed the decision shouldn’t go to Congress, he said the upper basin is “maybe pushing back too hard” considering that Colorado does not currently use its full water allocation from the Colorado River Compact.

“Coloradans should have a right to keep the water that we have been using the way we’ve been using it. I don’t think we should compromise that. But there’s a lot of things we could do to be part of the solution to the lower basin and get to a collaborative solution,” he said. 

“We’ve got real water experts in the state of Colorado. We should give them the charge. … It shouldn’t be coming from Washington,” he added.