“We’ve had 2 record years of water down here and there was a deep concern that we could possibly flood, and given the fact that all of this river restoration work had been performed, we came through just amazingly well. So it let me know that the work we’re doing is absolutely working. The impact of this type of funding for a small rural community is the difference between a declining economy, a disappearing town, and a vibrant community. So I can’t emphasize that enough. That it breeds hope. It breeds engagement with the outdoors. It’s a way where we can take care of the water.”
Lenise Peterman, Mayor of Helper City, UT
Overuse and climate-driven warming are pushing the Colorado River into crisis. While state and federal interests negotiate how to respond to declining water supplies, communities are working directly to adapt and build the basin’s resilience to an increasingly dry and variable climate. Pursuing focused investment in reliable water conservation and resilience projects will allow us to prepare for, rather than simply react to, an uncertain climate future.
Funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) are already helping communities adapt to a climate-changed West by making the most of every drop of rain and snow that falls. Some of this funding is going toward projects that work with nature to protect water at the source in forests and wetlands, support wise water use and reuse, and help farms stretch water supplies and improve water quality.
On June 17, we hosted a conversation moderated by American River’s Fay Hartman. The panel of project managers, NGOs and the Biden administration discussed multi-benefit, nature-based projects in the Upper Colorado River Basin featured on a new map from the Colorado River Resilience website. The Bureau of Reclamation has already invested $2.7 billion in basin resilience, and is getting ready to deliver even more federal drought and infrastructure dollars.
You can watch a recording of the virtual media briefing below or read the transcript here. I’ve also included some highlights from our discussion below.
Fay Hartman, Southwest Conservation Director, American Rivers (moderator)
“When I say build resilience, I mean that these are projects that communities are leading and taking on and implementing to help their community better adjust to and absorb the impacts of drought, fire, and flood, while creating local jobs, improving water security, and preserving cultural and traditional significance for Tribal Nations… With the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, we’ve seen unprecedented federal funding that’s being matched and leveraged at the local and state level to support building resilience in the Colorado River Basin and across the country.”
David Palumbo, Deputy Commissioner of Operations, Bureau of Reclamation
“Since the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was signed in November of 2021, Reclamation has announced more than $4.1 billion dollars for 537 projects, and over $2.7 billion for 332 projects across the Colorado River Basin. Since the enactment of the Inflation Reduction Act, we have announced over $2 billion dollars for investments, the majority of which are for the Colorado River… These investments and our actions are having impacts on the ground. They’re supporting our Colorado River operations and helping build resiliency across the basin for the sustainability of our system.”
“There’s a lot of interest in the programs, which is a great testament to communities like Helper, like Maybell, that they’re able to get that money to work on the ground and realize these benefits and queue up additional opportunities… When we put out our request for proposals under that Bucket 2 program in the Lower Basin, we received $5 billion dollars in investments [requests]. We have $4 billion dollars under the Inflation Reduction Act at large for drought in the West. So, just by virtue of the demand that came in with those requests for proposals, we see that there could be opportunities for further expenditure if Congress so choose to provide that funding.”
Get more information about federal investments through the Department of Interior BIL dashboard and Bureau of Reclamation IRA dashboard.
On the Maybell Diversion Irrigation Project in Maybell, CO:
Mike Camblin, President, Maybell Irrigation District
“You know in the past, those headgates took 2 people to open them and close them. It took a mile walk to go up there and and open them and adjust them. And so this project here was kind of the last of our management decisions that we’d made. And to be honest with you, we thought it was out of our reach financially until we started getting some help from from The Nature Conservancy and the Bureau of Reclamation and the [US Fish and Wildlife Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program] to help us do this. So what it’s allowed us to do is we can actually get on a computer now and open those headgates remotely. We know exactly how much water we’re taking and so it’s been key in our water management.”
“Before, since it was so hard to adjust that headgate, we always put a little extra water in there because it takes so long to get that adjustment. We had shareholders mad at us. ‘You know we need water. Can you get us water?’ And now within usually 6 to 12 hours, depending on where in the district they’re at, we can get them water. And so yeah, we’re saving water. We’re actually running less this spring than I think we ever have since I’ve been on the district! And that’s been 21 years.”
Jennifer Wellman, Freshwater Project Director, The Nature Conservancy in Colorado
“Projects that are multi-benefit, that serve agricultural water users and environmental purposes as well as recreational water needs… bring together people from diverse backgrounds so they can work on proactive solutions to protect the river and the water that everyone depends on… The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was critical at a time when we were fundraising and cobbling together resources from a bunch of different organizations. And suddenly there was an infusion of federal funds into this network, so we were able to apply and receive funding, which then advanced the project to construction. So, that’s the cumulative impact of working together at scale and really working together to reduce wasted water and assist with other regional efforts to support native and endangered fish, habitat and recreational water needs.”
New Maybell Diversion headgate (Photo: The Nature Conservancy)
On the Helper River Revitalization Project in Helper City, UT:
Lenise Peterman, Mayor of Helper City, UT
“We’ve created a space where fish can transverse up the river, and humans can actually go down the river. And that has resulted in an economic tool that we’re using in Helper City to diversify our economic position. We are a traditional coal mining, small rural community. and we’ve had to change gears with that single economic driver, and really look at ourselves and identify assets that we have in order to fire up some economic diversification, which is what we were doing with all of the river restoration work. You know, at the number of guests that we’re seeing, the number of people engaging the river; they’re fishing, they’re tubing. If the water is up, they can even kayak. So it’s been just an amazing asset that we’ve really recovered in our city to drive some of those changes that we need to see. And without this federal funding we would have been really hard pressed to successfully conclude these projects.”
Jordan Nielson, Utah State Director, Trout Unlimited
“I just want to note that we had been looking for the money to complete [the Helper River Revitalization Project] for a couple of years… we’d been working on this for 10 years by the time we got to this. So, the timing was right with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to get some money on the ground to get some of the bigger work done that we needed to do.”
“The bigger picture here is restoring the health of the river, and not just getting getting old infrastructure out. It’s making sure that river functions in a way that builds resilience. We’re removing invasive species and and replanting natives, we’re expanding floodplains so that river has somewhere to go rather than flood and and cause erosion and other damage. There’s decades worth of work that we could do right there in Helper building resilience.”
The Price River along Helper City during the final phase of the project (Photo: Jordan Nielson)
What’s next?
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