Dozens of communities and environmental groups in the Colorado River Basin are asking Congress for $2 billion to endure what they’re calling “one of the most challenging hydrologic years in more than a century of recordkeeping.”
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Celene Hawkins, who leads the Nature Conservancy’s Colorado River program, said Friday the money could help with a wide range of projects to respond to the drought.
Some communities could use it to remove dead vegetation and protect watersheds from destructive wildfires. Others could pay ranchers and other water right holders to keep more water in the river this season. Projects could also include rehabilitating land so that water slows down and remains in headwater areas longer.
“This could potentially be a pretty big bucket of projects,” Hawkins said.
As water supply forecasts continue to drop dramatically, Hawkins said she and other stakeholders are looking for a quick response.
“We don’t really have much time to address all of these challenges in the Colorado River basin,” Hawkins said. “There’s urgency in implementing these projects to address the crisis and water stress on people and nature in the basin.”
Hawkins said she sees the $2 billion figure in the request as “more of a floor and maybe less of a ceiling.”
It’s not clear yet how the money would be distributed among several states in a river basin where political fights and an impasse over how to share water long-term have persisted even during a historic drought.
“I don’t think we’re that far in the process yet,” Hawkins said when asked how seven states would share emergency funding from Congress. “That would be an important discussion to have moving forward.”
Stakeholders signing onto the emergency funding request range from the Navajo Nation to Routt County in northwest Colorado to the National Audubon Society.
The letter also urges Congress to create a permanent federal funding mechanism to boost conservation projects in the long-term.
“The challenges facing the Basin—drought, wildfire, hydrologic change, and limited water supplies—are structural and ongoing,” the groups wrote. “They cannot be addressed through episodic or emergency appropriations alone.”
The funding request arrived a week after federal hydrologists said Lake Powell, the largest reservoir in the upper basin, is on track to receive the lowest amount of runoff in its history.
The Interior Department last month started pulling massive amounts of water out of Flaming Gorge Reservoir on the Wyoming-Utah border to boost flows down into Powell and prevent it from getting so low that it stops generating electricity.
This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado River, produced by KUNC in Colorado and supported by the Walton Family Foundation. KUNC is solely responsible for its editorial coverage.
