Keep The Colorado River Flowing

Ask the CWCB to Keep the Colorado River flowing and accept the Shoshone Water Rights

For more than 100 years, the Shoshone Hydropower Plant in Glenwood Canyon and its non-consumptive water rights have played a critical role in sustaining the Colorado River.  With two senior water rights (1902 and 1929), the Shoshone plant has ensured year-round flows through the Colorado River both upstream and downstream - calling water past upstream trans-basin diversions that could otherwise deplete the upper Colorado River even more heavily, and delivering flows that also maintain the Colorado River below the Shoshone outflow, in and below Glenwood Springs. Unfortunately, the power plant's infrastructure has been aging leading to periodic outages and highlighting the need for a more permanent solution for preserving the water rights whose operation has sustained the Colorado River, its gold medal fishery, endangered fish habitat, and communities and working lands that rely on the river. Shoshone is especially essential for keeping the Colorado River flowing in the winter non-growing season, when other senior irrigation water rights in the Grand Valley are not drawing water down the river. Shoshone is the essential senior right that keeps the Colorado flowing 12 months of the year.

The Colorado River District has entered into a $99 million purchase and sale agreement to acquire the water rights from Xcel Energy, and is working to establish instream flows in Glenwood Canyon as an additional use of those water rights - so that regardless of when and how the power plant can continue to operate, the Colorado River will continue to have water delivered as it has been for more than 100 years. By preserving that status quo on a permanent basis, the River District's proposal will benefit fish and other aquatic life, Colorado's outdoor recreation economy, and the communities that rely on continued historic flows along the Colorado River.  The only difference is that when the rights are exercised for instream flow, water will flow in the river channel in Glenwood Canyon from the existing Shoshone diversion to the powerplant outlet, rather than through the pipelines that would otherwise use the water for hydroelectricity generation through that reach.

The Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) is the entity under state law that can hold water rights for instream flow purposes, including through acquisitions/donations/leases of senior water rights as would be the case with the Shoshone water rights. The CWCB is currently taking public comment through September 18 on whether it should accept donation of these water rights into the state Instream Flow Program. 

Please ask the CWCB to accept the donation of Shoshone flows in the State's Instream Flow Program and keep the Colorado River flowing year round. You can use the template comments provided here, but your comments will be most effective if you also add personal details about why the Colorado River and its health are important to you.

Help Restore Federal Funding for Restoration and Rural Economic Development

Help Restore Federal Funding for Restoration and Rural Economic Development

Trout Unlimited’s restoration efforts in Colorado don’t just support the state’s working lands and waters, they are also a driving force behind rural economic growth. We’ve long recognized the importance of healthy rivers and fisheries for the outdoor recreation economy, which in Colorado generates $17.2 billion in economic activity and supports over 132,000 jobs.  TU’s projects are also generating high-quality jobs for contractors, engineers, and laborers, most of whom live and work in the very communities benefiting from these projects.

Many of TU’s efforts rely upon and help leverage federal dollars from agency partners such as the Bureau of Reclamation, US Forest Service, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service. In Colorado alone, TU is managing more than $24 million in federally-funded projects, helping support more than 250 Colorado jobs through our contractors and partners. Federal dollars are critical to conducting projects like the Colorado River Connectivity Channel (pictured) - and they are multiplied, leveraging other state, local and private sector dollars to make a difference for our waterways and local communities.

The recent pause in government funding creates financial hardships for contractors, workers, farmers, ranchers and others who depend on restoration projects for income. The negative impacts in Colorado’s rural areas are especially devastating.

Looking forward, the future of restoration funding programs is in question as Congress takes up how to approach the next federal budget year - and continued funding for agency partnership grants is critical for needed projects from protecting water in the Colorado River, to reducing wildfire risks in our forests, to modernizing infrastructure for irrigators to benefit both farms and fish.

As Congress and agencies review these federally-funded programs, we urge you to reach out to your elected officials and ask them to restore - and sustain - critical federal funding for restoration projects and the rural communities they support.

Your Voice Matters for Colorado's Rivers!

As leaders across the state in nine "Basin Roundtables" work to update their local water and river management plans, or "Basin Implementation Plans (BIPs)", they're taking public comment from community members. It’s time to make your voice heard: What do you think needs to happen in your local watershed for the health of your local rivers, the environment, and water supply? To help you do this, Water for Colorado is collecting comments, which will then be submitted on your behalf to your local Basin Roundtable once the public comment period ends on Nov. 15.

WATER FOR COLORADO HAS COMPILED SIX KEY RECOMMENDATIONS YOU CAN USE IN YOUR COMMENTS:

• Ensure healthy, flowing rivers

• Prioritize resilient watersheds

• Center equity

• Support for irrigated agriculture

• Include water conservation and efficiency

• Plan for sustainable Funding

Learn more about these recommendations here.

Get to your your river basin here.

Take action to protect trout fisheries and watersheds from the impacts of climate change

Photo courtesy of Trout Unlimited/Josh Duplechian

We are at a critical moment. Congress is now considering major infrastructure and spending bills that would have far-reaching impacts on America’s rivers and streams, wild and native trout and salmon, and all of us who care about them.

Trout Unlimited is asking you to take action today by contacting your elected officials and urging them to responsibly address the risks posed by a changing climate. Legislation under discussion this month could shape how our country responds to the threat facing rivers, communities, and fish and wildlife. Please urge your lawmakers to prioritize policies that address the root causes of climate change, as well as legislation that funds projects to help our lands and waters adapt to warmer temperatures and more frequent drought, wildfire, and floods.

In Colorado and throughout the west we’ve seen these impacts first hand, from the ongoing serious Colorado River basin drought to last year’s record wildfire season in Colorado. Now is the time to act, and targeted investments in watershed stewardship and promoting clean energy can help secure a future for our imperiled fisheries.

Trout Unlimited has set up a page where you can learn more and take action at tu.org/climate. Please take a moment to visit the site and use the action alert to reach out and convey your interests to your members of Congress.

Thank you for engaging on this vital issue, and for all you do for Trout Unlimited!

Help protect streams and wetlands: Support the Clean Water for All Act

The Clean Water for All Act is an effort to ensure that our headwaters - many of which are ephemeral or intermittent streams that do not flow year round - retain the Clean Water Act protections they’ve enjoyed for more than 40 years but that would be lost under a recently announced rule changing Clean Water Act definitions. If we don’t protect the sources of our larger rivers, we can’t protect those rivers or the fisheries and communities that rely on them!

Below is an excerpt from Steve Moyer, TU’s vice president for government affairs, read the full blog here.

The Clean Water for All Act would repeal the Trump administration’s harmful rule and direct the agencies to start over in a manner that protects America’s waterways—all of them—consistent with four decades of Clean Water Act precedent.

Research by Trout Unlimited suggests that the administration’s new rule will end Clean Water Act protections for more than six million miles of streams—half the U.S. total. These streams contribute to the drinking water supplies of 117 million Americans and provide essential fish and wildlife habitat that supports a robust outdoor recreation economy worth $887 billion.

The rule will also erase protections for more than half of the nation’s wetlands, a critical part of functioning watersheds. Wetlands help recharge groundwater, filter pollution and protect communities from flooding.

The EPA’s new rule was justifiably criticized by many state and local government agencies, fish and wildlife conservation organizations and hundreds of thousands of citizens during the rule-making comment period.  It is a real threat to trout and salmon watersheds nationwide.

The Clean Water for All Act would help protect the rivers of southwestern Oregon, and streams across the nation. Please take a moment today to help us urge House members to work with their colleagues to pass this bill into law.

Support Public Lands - the Great American Outdoors Act

Please take a moment today to ask your elected officials to support S.3422 and help secure funding for public lands and outdoor recreation.

Reconnect the Colorado

Reconnecting the Colorado River around Windy Gap Reservoir is moving one step closer to reality! The US Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service is conducting scoping on the Colorado River Headwaters Connectivity Project - an initiative of the NRCS along with Northern Water, Trout Unlimited, and Grand County.  The project contemplates a bypass channel that will restore the Colorado River around the Windy Gap Reservoir - benefitting water quality, fish passage, aquatic habitat, and restoring an additional mile of the Colorado River by creating the channel around the reservoir. 

Deadline to submit comments is August 31, 2018.