Jason Ullmann is Colorado’s new state engineer and director of the Division of Water Resources. Governor Jared Polis and Dan Gibbs, Colorado Department of Natural Resources executive director made the announcement Thursday.
Ullmann replaces long-time state engineer Kevin Rein. Here’s our exit interview with Rein, where he reflects on his time serving as the state’s top water engineer.
“I congratulate Jason as he steps into this new role,” Gov. Polis said. “Jason brings years of experience in water management, from working with water users in the orchards and fields of the Western Slope to leading on interstate water issues like the Colorado River. At a time when the stakes are higher than ever before on water, I look forward to his contributions and leadership as our state engineer and know his expertise will help protect Colorado’s precious water resources.”
Ullmann has more than 20 years of experience in water resources engineering, 14 years of which have been at Colorado’s DWR as the deputy state engineer. Before his time with DWR, he gained experience in water resources management as a city engineer for Montrose and as a consulting engineer for ditch and reservoir companies throughout Colorado.
“The state engineer and director of the Division of Water Resources is charged with the difficult task of shepherding our state’s precious water to users within the state of Colorado and through our interstate compacts and decrees,” said Dan Gibbs, executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. “Jason is the right person at the right time as our next state engineer as he must ensure these uses while balancing the increasing needs of outdoor recreation, wildlife and managing for the impacts of climate change on our water supplies. I know Jason is up for the challenge and look forward to working with him as state engineer and director at the Division of Water Resources.”
The Division of Water Resources, within Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources, has more than 270 staff members working in every watershed in Colorado. Its charge is to administer the state’s water rights, issue water well permits, represent Colorado in interstate water compact matters, monitor streamflow and water use, approve construction and repair of dams and perform dam safety inspections, issue licenses for well drillers, and assure the safe and proper construction of water wells, and maintain numerous nation-leading databases of publicly available Colorado water information.
“As a teenager I developed an understanding of the importance of water in Colorado, both working to set irrigation on my grandparents’ farm and backpacking to beautiful remote lakes. This turned into a passion for water that led me to pursue a career in water resources engineering,” said Ullmann.
“Since the appointment of the first state engineer in 1881,” Ullmann continued, “the position has managed the staff in charge of directing the use of Colorado’s water resources based on the prior appropriation system and ensuring that Colorado meets its compact obligations to downstream states. Increasing demand, including to protect water in streams for environmental and recreational uses, paired with decreasing supply, has added to the complexity and challenges that DWR faces in fulfilling this role. It is an honor to be selected as the state engineer and director of the Division of Water Resources, and I look forward to leading our dedicated staff to tackle these challenges.”
Ullmann grew up in Fort Collins and attended Colorado State University, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering. Jason has spent the past 17 years in Montrose, where he has spent his time in numerous volunteer roles and raising three kids with his wife, Jessica.
State Engineer’s Office Division boundaries. Division 1 in Greeley: South Platte, Laramie & Republican River Basins. Division 2 in Pueblo: Arkansas River Basin. Division 3 in Alamosa: Rio Grande River Basin. Division 4 in Montrose: Gunnison & San Miguel River Basins, & portions of the Dolores River. Division 5 in Glenwood Springs: Colorado River Basin (excluding the Gunnison River Basin). Division 6 in Steamboat Springs: Yampa, White and North Platte River Basins. Division 7 in Durango: San Juan River Basin and portions of the Dolores River.
Wetlands, which are havens of biodiversity, offer priceless ecological benefits. As wetlands are lost to development nationwide, critics of the dam project worry about its local impact.
(Photo Credit: John Fielder via Writers on the Range)
Outrage over the Trump-packed U.S. Supreme Court rolling back federal reproductive rights has in some ways overshadowed the now 6-3 conservative majority’s relentless assault on environmental regulations that for decades protected Colorado’s clean air and water.
Former president and current GOP candidate Donald Trump’s recently installed SCOTUS (he appointed three of the six staunch conservatives in his last term), has consistently ruled against federal environmental regulation – from carbon-spewing power plants to downwind air pollution. And it’s likely to rule against President Joe Biden’s new vehicle emissions limits.
Last year’s Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) decision – in which an Idaho couple simply didn’t want to have to apply for a federal wetlands dredging permit — largely flew under the national outrage radar, but it stripped away Clean Water Act protections for fully two-thirds of Colorado’s wetlands and streams, according to an amicus brief filed in support of those federal protections by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser.
Now Colorado lawmakers are trying to step into that regulatory void with Wednesday’s filing of the Regulate Dredge and Fill Activities in State Waters bill (HB24-1379). If passed, it would require a rulemaking process by the Colorado Department of Health and Environment’s Water Quality and Control Division to permit dredge and fill activities on both public and private land.
“There’s no mistake that [the Sackett] decision came right after Trump appointed three new justices to the Supreme Court, where there’s a conservative majority who could issue an industry-favorable ruling on this issue,” Conservation Colorado Senior Water Campaign Manager Josh Kuhn said in a phone interview.
“It’s unfortunate that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of industry but now it does create an opportunity for Colorado to create regulatory certainty, and it’s imperative that we get this done the right way,” Kuhn added. “The Supreme Court’s decision ignores the science of groundwater. What it did is it said if you are standing in a wetland, and you don’t see surface water connecting that wetland to another covered [by EPA regulation] water body, it is no longer protected.”
Iron Fen. Photo credit from report “A Preliminary Evaluation of Seasonal Water Levels Necessary to Sustain Mount Emmons Fen: Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests,” David J. Cooper, Ph.D, December 2003.
Anyone who’s hiked Colorado’s backcountry knows there are all sorts of water bodies that are disconnected from rivers, streams and lakes, fed by springs and often only existing on the surface when it’s been raining or following a decent snow year. In fact, the Colorado Wetland Information Center identifies 15 different types of wetland ecological systems in Colorado.
Those wetlands and ephemeral (not continually flowing) streams provide critical habitat for Colorado’s dwindling wildlife, guard against increasingly devastating wildfires fueled by manmade climate change and filter pollutants from vital sources of drinking water.
“Colorado has already lost half of our wetlands since statehood, and they are super-important for ecosystem services, where they mitigate floods, decrease the severity of wildfire, help retain water like sponges and release that water to provide base flows in drier parts of the year, providing critical wildlife habitat for about 80% of wildlife,” Kuhn said.
Now, thanks to the right-leaning SCOTUS – including Colorado’s own Neil Gorsuch – 60% of those waterbodies are currently unprotected by the Clean Water Act’s 404 permit process administered successfully for five decades by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Now the state of Colorado must attempt to fill that role.
“Water is a precious resource and is critical to our economy and way of life,” Colorado Gov. Jared Polis wrote in a press release Wednesday. “I am committed to protecting Colorado’s water today and building a more water-efficient, sustainable, and resilient future. Today, we further our commitment to protect Colorado’s water for the next generation of Coloradans.”
The Polis-backed bill is sponsored in the Colorado Senate by Dylan Roberts, D-Frisco, and in the Colorado House by state Rep. Karen McCormick, D-Longmont, and Speaker of the House Julie McCluskie, D-Dillon.
A competing bill (SB24-127) was introduced last month by Republican state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer. That proposal, dubbed the Regulate Dredged & Fill Material State Waters bill, has the backing of the Colorado Association of Homebuilders – a development trade organization that did not return a call seeking comment on the Dem-backed bill.
“Now that [definition of] Waters of the U.S. is much more limited than it was, the things that [SCOTUS] said are not ‘Waters of the U.S.’ are ephemeral streams, disconnected wetlands and fens,” Eagle County Commissioner Kathy Chandler-Henry said in a phone interview. “So on the Western Slope, the mountains, nearly all of our streams are not year-round streams. They flow when there’s water. So if those are not protected anymore by the feds, then are they going to be protected by the state or not? That’s the question that’s going be answered in these two competing legislative bills.”
Chandler-Henry is currently the Eagle County representative for and president of both the Colorado River District and the Water Quality and Quantity (QQ) program of the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments. She said both groups are likely to weigh in on the new bill at some point.
Conservation Colorado’s Kuhn said the Kirkmeyer bill “basically draws a political line. It says that if waters are outside of 1,500 feet from the historical floodplain, they would be unprotected.”
That would make state regulation of dredge and fill more expensive, he argues, because the state would then have to physically survey and determine whether bodies of water outside of that boundary should be regulated. State regulation will primarily be paid for by permit fees and possibly some federal grants. Colorado is out front nationally on this contentious issue.
Blanca Wetlands, Colorado BLM-managed ACEC Blanca Wetlands is a network of lakes, ponds, marshes and wet meadows designated for its recreation and wetland values. The BLM Colorado and its partners have made strides in preserving, restoring and managing the area to provide rich and diverse habitats for wildlife and the public. To visit or get more information, see: http://www.blm.gov/co/st/en/fo/slvfo/blanca_wetlands.html. By Bureau of Land Management – Blanca Wetlands Area of Critical Environmental Concern, Colorado, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42089248
“The Kirkmeyer bill houses the program in the Department of Natural Resources, and so that would also drive up the costs because you’d have to create a new division, and you’d also have to create a new commission and staff for that commission, whereas that expertise already exists within the [CDPHE’s] Water Quality Control Division and the Water Quality Control Commission.”
Kuhn thinks Colorado’s agriculture industry should support HB24-1379.
“We’re actually hopeful that ag will not be opposing this legislation because in the existing 404 program there are longstanding exemptions and exclusions,” Kuhn said. “One of those exemptions is for certain types of agricultural activity. That would be copied and pasted into legislation and that should appease concerns from the ag community.”
And Kuhn added that while the new law will mostly focus on development aimed at dredging and filling bodies of water on private land, there’s a concern about protections for wetlands on Forest Service and U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land facing development.
“The [SCOTUS] ruling does apply to both public and private land, but the majority of the development pressure is on private land,” Kuhn said. “That doesn’t mean if there was a mining claim on Forest Service land and they wanted to build a road or something – [in the past] they would have had to secure a 404 permit — but if those waters weren’t jurisdictional today, they could just go out and destroy it without a permit.”
Mark Eddy, representing the Protect Colorado Waters Coalition, cited AG Weiser’s contention that responsible industry should not fear reasonable regulation.
“That’s the way we look at this is it’s reasonable, it’s transparent, everybody knows what the rules are, and it protects a valuable resource,” Eddy said. “It is not saying you can never touch these places; it’s that there’s a process in place to determine which ones you can touch, and then, when you do have to develop them, what kind of mitigation needs to occur.”
Tom Caldwell, co-owner and head brewer at Big Trout Brewing Company in Winter Park, said in a press release that his company needs clean, cold water to craft award-winning beer.
“Our town depends on clean water for a multitude of tourist activities that bring people from all over the world,” Caldwell said. “We need to protect our waterways and wetlands. House Speaker Julie McCluskie and Senator Dylan Roberts’ bill is a needed remedy to a terrible decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Colorado Rivers. Credit: Geology.com
Click the link to read “State lawmakers propose plan after half of Colorado’s waters lost federal protections: Bill would create state program to regulate dredging and filling waterways” on The Denver Post website (Elise Schmelzer). Here’s an excerpt:
March 21, 2024
Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday night introduced a bill that requires the state to create a permitting process for people who want to fill in, dredge or pave over waterways. Colorado has had no method to regulate these dredge-and-fill activities since the May court decision removed federal protection for more than half of Colorado’s waters…House Bill 1379 would require the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to develop a permitting process by May 1, 2025. That process would need to minimize harm to the environment when people want to dig up or fill in waterways while building housing developments, roads or utilities. The permitting process would mirror the federal process that no longer applies to wetlands and seasonal streams…
Both wetlands and seasonal streams serve critical roles in the state’s environment, conservation advocates said. Seasonal streams deliver snowmelt to larger streams during runoff season. Wetlands act like a sponge in the ecosystem — they absorb floodwaters, serve as critical animal habitat and act as a buffer to wildfire…Half of Colorado’s wetlands have disappeared or been destroyed since the late 1800s, according to the Colorado Wetland Information Center…“
Wetlands, headwater streams, and washes are profoundly connected like capillaries of the circulatory system to larger waters downstream,” Abby Burk, senior manager of the Western Rivers Program at Audubon Rockies, said in a news release. She called the waterways “essential for birds and vital natural systems,” which support the resilience of water supplies in Colorado’s drying climate.
Colorado River headwaters near Kremmling, Colorado. Photo: Abby Burk via Audubon Rockies
Click the link to read “Democratic leaders introduce bill to protect Colorado wetlands” on the Colorado Politics website (Marianne Goodland). Here’s an excerpt:
March 21, 2024
Nearly a million acres of wetlands in Colorado could gain state protection that lost federal oversight when the U.S. Supreme Court decided last year wetlands that lacked direct connection to bodies of water didn’t require Environmental Protection Agency preservations…Last summer, lawmakers heard from municipal and state officials that Colorado needed to develop its own protections for those wetlands…
Alex Funk, director of water resources and senior counsel for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, said in August that almost 90% of fish and wildlife in Colorado rely on the state’s wetlands at some point during their lifecycle. That includes species such as the Gunnison sage grouse, greenback cutthroat trout, and migratory birds. These ecosystems are also crucial to the state’s economy, Funk said. They provide other benefits, such as filtering pollutants from drinking water or regulating sedimentation that may otherwise clog up infrastructure and reservoirs…
The bill would apply to about 60% of Colorado’s wetlands and is intended to cover those wetlands that are not already federally protected. The permitting framework in HB 1379 “is based on well-established approaches already used by the Army Corps of Engineers and will provide clarity on when a permit is needed. Normal farming and ranching activities, such as plowing, farm road construction, and erosion control practices would not require a permit,” the statement said. Until Sackett, the Army Corps’ permitting program protected Colorado waters from pollution caused by dredge and fill activities.
“Dredge and fill activities involve digging up or placing dirt and other fill material into wetlands or surface waters as part of construction projects,” the statement explained.
The Mortenson Center in Global Engineering & Resilience at the University of Colorado Boulder along with Castalia Advisors were commissioned by WaterAid’s Resilient Water Accelerator (RWA), the Voluntary Carbon Market Integrity Initiative (VCMI), and HSBC to discover an achievable pathway to creating a green, resilient future for global water supplies supported by voluntary carbon markets.
Through their research, it was found that over 1.6 billion CO2 emissions could be saved per year in the global water sector, equivalent to nearly half of the EU’s annual emissions, confirming the importance of placing water at the heart of climate action. Their report, just out, is titiled Decarbonizing Water: Applying the Voluntary Carbon Market Toward Global Water Security.
Evan Thomas, Director of the Mortenson Center in Global Engineering and Resilience and co-author of the report says, “The first thing many people notice about climate change is what it’s doing to our water. Dry places are becoming drier; wet places are becoming wetter. But funding water security solutions is challenging because water is a local problem. In this report, we show how local water projects can be brought into a global carbon credit economy. Over 1.6 billion carbon credits could be generated per year from water security projects – for example to encourage water conservation in Colorado or water treatment in Rwanda. These credits as part of a liquid market can be bought and sold and create revenue that incentivizes the actions we all need to take to make sure water is available for everyone, always.”
Resilient water, sanitation and hygiene systems are essential to building healthy communities and thriving economies, with the risk of water stress on the most vulnerable communities elevating climate, political and economic fragility, as noted in this year’s globalTop Risks 2024.
In practice, this would mean generating carbon credits from projects that deliver carbon savings as well as water benefits such as improved drinking water access in developing countries, reduced methane emissions from latrines and centralized wastewater treatment plants or restored coastal environments.
The research looked at where emissions come from within the water sector and found that delivering improvements in coastal blue carbon, wastewater treatment, drinking water treatment, irrigation, as well as energy efficiency more broadly, could improve water security and generate carbon credit emission reductions.
This work comes at a critical time with increasing recognition that the climate crisis is a water crisis. 90% of all natural disasters are water-related, whether it be experienced through too little or too much water. From flood defences to drought resistance, the solutions are out there. But more investment and management are needed now to develop robust and reliable water, sanitation and hygiene systems that can withstand any climate.
The Resilient Water Accelerator is in an unique position to deepen access to the Voluntary Carbon Market. They are working to build and strengthen efforts to develop robust monitoring and management of water risk, and they are engaging with finance organizations such as African Development Bank, 2030 Water Resources Group and African Finance Corporation.
The Cocopah Tribe and two other Arizona tribal communities are working with new money and tools to address climate change after receiving grants from the U.S. Department of the Interior and several private funders. In 2023, the 1,000-member Cocopah Tribe, whose lands lie along the Colorado River southwest of Yuma, received $5 million from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s America the Beautiful Challenge to support two riparian restoration initiatives. During the four-year project, the tribe will remove invasive species and replant 45,000 native trees, like cottonwood, willow and mesquite to restore 390 acres of the river’s historic floodplain close to the U.S.-Mexico border. The Cocopah Tribe also received $515,000 from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bonneville Environmental Foundation for the restoration effort.
“These are places where habitat has been lost over the last century because of damming, rechanneling the river, overuse, and climate change,” said Jen Alspach, director of the Cocopah tribe’s environmental protection office.
The goal of these projects is to restore habitat for native wildlife and migratory birds that depend on the native plants that once prospered in the floodplain, she said…The tribe will recreate and rehabilitate 41 acres along the Colorado River that have become choked with invasive plants. It will also create a youth corps to support the restoration efforts, according to a release from the foundation…Restoring the river bottom is a priority as the tribe reintroduces plants and trees that have disappeared due to low river levels and invasive species, he said.
A Vermilion Flycatcher along the Laguna Grande Restauration Site in Baja California, Mexico. Photo: Claudio Contreras Koob
