Several Colorado lawmakers in Congress have expressed support for the Colorado River District’s efforts to purchase the Shoshone water rights on the Colorado River.
On Monday, Oct. 7, six members of the state’s congressional delegation sent a letter to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, demonstrating support for the district’s forthcoming application for funding from the Inflation Reduction Act. The district anticipates seeking $40 million toward the total $99 million required to acquire the water rights.
The letter was signed by Colorado’s U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper and four of its eight representatives, Reps. Joe Neguse, Jason Crow, Brittany Pettersen and Diana DeGette. All six lawmakers are Democrats. According to a spokesperson from Bennet’s office, all members of the Colorado delegation were approached to sign the letter.
“We recognize the Shoshone Permanency Project’s complex nature and ongoing technical review, but believe the opportunity to protect historical Colorado River flows deserves your attention,” the letter reads. “We encourage you to give the River District’s proposal your full and fair consideration consistent with all applicable rules and regulations.”
The letter comes less than a week after a group of 16 state lawmakers asked the U.S. senators for their support of the acquisition.
The Shoshone Power Plant in Glenwood Canyon has the oldest and largest non-consumptive water rights on the Colorado River. The rights account for 1 million acre-feet of water a year flowing through the upper reaches of the Colorado River, down through Glenwood Canyon and out to the state line.
For many decades, the Colorado River District has worked to preserve these rights and flows. In December, it struck a deal with Xcel Energy to purchase the rights for $98.5 million. It has four years to secure the funding and pay for the rights under the current agreement.
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.
In trying to reach the full amount required to make the purchase, the Colorado River District intends to apply for $40 million in funding 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.
“Preserving the Colorado River’s historical flow regime as intended by the Shoshone Permanency Project will benefit the Colorado River ecosystem every year, and especially in dry years,” the letter to the Bureau of Reclamation reads.
In addition to securing the funding needed for the purchase, the acquisition and instream flow agreement will have to be reviewed by the Colorado Water Conservation Board and the State of Colorado Water Court. This is the state’s typical process for the transfer and sale of any water rights.
For this, the district is collecting data and preparing a historic analysis of the water flows and use on the Colorado River.
Lindsay DeFrates, the river district’s deputy director of public relations, said this includes evaluating “everything about the historic use of the water rights” over the last 100 years.
“To proceed through any water court change case, you need to be able to make sure you are demonstrating non-injury and that you are not enlarging the right,” DeFrates said. “So, we are preparing to have our best available answer to how we can go through the change case and not impact water users and still maintain this critical flow that provides so many benefits up and down the river.”
Northern Water, one of the Front Range end users of the water rights on the Colorado River, has expressed its concerns with this process, asking for a separate, independent review of the river and usage to “protect the actual historic flows.”
In September, Northern Water wrote a letter to Hickenlooper detailing this. The district published its own letter addressing the Front Range provider’s concerns, outlining its intentions to maintain the river’s status quo.
“Based on our work to date, we continue to believe that our proposal will protect the historical flow regime and the numerous associated benefits to the entire state without negatively impacting the operations of upstream system reservoirs, including Green Mountain Reservoir,” reads the letter from the Colorado River District.
Link to original article