The Colorado River District seeks a substantial contribution from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to complete the purchase of Shoshone water rights as uncertainty surrounds future climate-related funding under President-elect Trump’s administration.

Last week, the governmental entity created to represent Western Slope water users submitted its 600-page application for $40 million from the Inflation Reduction Act, which allocated $4 billion toward drought mitigation efforts. The application falls under the Bureau of Reclamation’s Upper Colorado River Basin Environmental Drought Mitigation funding opportunity, also known as the Bucket 2E funding.  

The $40 million would go a long way toward the $98.5 million needed for the Colorado River District to purchase the water rights from Xcel Energy. So far, the district has raised around $56.9 million from the state legislature, its board and the various Western Slope municipalities and utilities it serves.

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While the district’s request for federal dollars has received support from the majority of Colorado’s federal congressional delegation, the Inflation Reduction Act is likely to be targeted by Trump as he takes office in January. While the president-elect is unlikely to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act completely, he has promised to rescind any unspent funds under the act. 

The bureau is expected to award the Bucket 2E grants in the spring. 

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Regardless of this uncertainty, Amy Moyer, the Colorado River District’s director of strategic partnerships, said the district “remains steadfast in its commitment to securing the Shoshone water rights and protecting the long-term health of the Colorado River.”

“The Colorado River District is confident that the Shoshone Water Rights Preservation Project funding application is comprehensive, enjoys broad bipartisan support, and aligns with the intent and criteria of this critical funding opportunity,” she said. 

Last week, Moyer — alongside several other river district representatives and Western Slope electeds — traveled to Washington D.C. to advocate for swift action on the district’s funding application. Kathy Chandler-Henry, an outgoing Eagle County commissioner, was among the group who met with Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, Rep. Joe Neguse, as well as with representatives from the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Council for Environmental Quality. 

Chandler-Henry said the group went to “stress the importance of the acquisition of those water rights for Western Slope entities and to encourage them to get it done before Jan. 20, as it’s uncertain what will happen to funding for projects like that in the new administration.”

“There is really a general sense of unknowing about what’s going to happen with those funds for the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Act,” she added. 

There is hope, however, for the Shoshone acquisition funding based on the positive feedback the group received about the application, according to Chandler-Henry.

“What we’re hopeful for is if we can get a commitment for the funding and support from everyone, which we seem to have, that we’ll be able to go ahead and get the funds allocated in the new administration for the project,” she said. 

Federal funding or not, the district intends to continue moving the acquisition forward. 

“We would have to look for other funding mechanisms, and I’m not sure what those would be, but it is so critical to the Western Slope to get this done that I think we’ll get it done one way or the other,” Chandler-Henry said. “We’re just hopeful that the U.S. government and Bureau of Reclamation see this as a good investment with all of the work that they’re doing on the Colorado River and drought contingencies and shortages up and down the basins. This is a good way to keep the water flowing in the Colorado River for everybody.”

Why the Shoshone water rights matter

The Shoshone Power Plant in Glenwood Canyon has the oldest and largest non-consumptive water rights on the Colorado River. The senior water right dates back to 1905 and allows the power plant to divert 1,250 cubic feet per second of water. A secondary, junior right was established in 1929 for 158 cubic feet per second of water. 

The Colorado River District has sought the acquisition of these rights for many years to ensure these flows continue as they have, regardless of what happens with the power plant. 

“Xcel will continue to operate this plant for as long as they can to create hydropower,” Moyer said at an Oct. 22 tour of Shoshone organized by the Water for Colorado Coalition. “What we’re doing is adding another mechanism to be able to continue to use these water rights permanently in the future and allow them to be used for in-stream flow purposes and maintain this historical flow regime that we’ve all understood and used since this power plant has been operating for over 100 years.”

This need has been exacerbated in recent years due to the risks and uncertainties around the plant’s age, location and susceptibility to natural hazards including wildfires and mudslides. 

In November, Aspen Journalism reported that the plant was down for 221 days in 202, 307 days in 2023, 91 days in 2022 and 143 days in 2021. Many of these extended closures were related to impacts from the 2020 Grizzly Creek fire and subsequent mudslides in 2021.  

Today, during such outages, water flow continues thanks to an agreement called the Shoshone Outage Protocol. However, the river district expressed that it only offers limited protection to the senior right and none to the junior right in its federal grant application.  

Proponents of the acquisition say that maintaining in-stream flow — regardless of what happens with the plant — will protect the various agriculture, recreation and ecosystem needs along the 250 miles of the Colorado River from Glenwood Canyon to the state border. 

“Transmountain diverters are junior to the Shoshone call, and if we were to lose that call, it could very well end up that the water would flow east instead of west, and we would not have water from the Headwaters down,” Chandler-Henry said. 

What is the status quo? 

While the Colorado River District has maintained that it would preserve the river’s historic flow, what these flows are has remained a question. However, in its federal grant application, the district included a preliminary assessment of the historical flow conducted by BBA Water Consultants. 

This analysis relies on the “administrative flow” — that is all the water necessary for the plant to operate and generate electricity — at the Dotsero Gage, where the water rights have been administered since 1941, between 1975 and 2003. 

According to the analysis, the administrative flow not only “reflects the historical impact to upstream water users during times when the plant was operating,” but also “includes 100% of the return flows from the historical exercise of the Shoshone Water Rights, which will be required to be maintained in a change of water right to prevent injury to downstream users.”

The 29 years evaluated for this preliminary analysis do not include flows after -2003. According to the analysis, this is because the plant has had periods of extended closures beyond the control of Xcel Energy since 2003. This includes a 2007 equipment failure as well as the Grizzly Creek fire and subsequent impacts. This period was chosen to be reflective of “consistent operations” and includes dry, wet and average hydrologic years, it states. 

Overall, the analysis concludes that the average annual streamflow is equal to 844,644 acre-feet, below the 1,019,360 acre-feet granted by the senior right. For comparison, a typical household uses around 0.5 acre-feet, or 150,000 gallons, of water each year, according to the Colorado State University Extension.

This number represents a volumetric limit, which does not change the nature of the existing water rights but is intended to preserve the river’s status quo, according to Brendon Langenhuizen, the district’s director of technical advocacy. 

This assessment has been shared with various Shoshone stakeholders including Northern Water, one of the Front Range end users of the water rights on the Colorado River. The provider has expressed its concerns with the district’s acquisition process, the top of which is ensuring that the “actual historic flows” are protected, according to a September letter from the provider to Hickenlooper.  

Jeff Stahla, Northern Water’s public information officer, stated that its priority is ensuring the process is done in a way consistent with Colorado water laws and court procedures. Northern Water is still evaluating this preliminary analysis and did not have an “immediate reaction” to it, Stahla said. 

“However, our overall takeaway is that we are happy to engage with the river district to ensure the goals of Shoshone permanency are met without damaging any other existing water user,” Stahla added. 

Ultimately, historic use will be determined by the Colorado Water Court — the final stop for the Colorado River District in acquiring these rights. It is working to complete all necessary steps by Dec. 31, 2027.