Click the link to read the article on the Summit Daily website (Ryan Spencer). Here’s an excerpt:
March 29, 2025
While a federal judge has ordered the Trump Administration to unfreeze federal funds, the National Council of Nonprofits says its continues to receive reports of nonprofits struggling to access federal grant money
A habitat restoration project aimed at restoring Gold Medal fishing status along a stretch of the Blue River that flows through Silverthorne is being impacted by a federal funding freeze. The Blue River Watershed Group — a local nonprofit that received $1.8 million in grant federal funding for the restoration project in December 2023 — told the Silverthorne Town Council earlier this month that the federal government has paused disbursement of those funds.
“Grant funding for this project through the Bureau of Reclamation’s WaterSMART Aquatic Ecosystem Project grant is affected by the recent pauses in federal grant funding,” Blue River Watershed Group executive director Vanessa Logsdon said in a statement Thursday, March 28.
The Blue River Watershed Group has partnered with Trout Unlimited and the town of Silverthorne, which has provided $150,000, on the project. The $1.8 million federal grant is to complete the engineering and design for the habitat restoration project, which focuses on the stretch of the Blue River from the Dillon Reservoir to the Columbine Campground north of Silverthorne. Studies have shown that that stretch of river is impacted by unnatural temperatures from dam releases that can be too warm in the winter and too cold in the summer, disrupting the life cycles of aquatic organisms such as trout. The project aims to get the Blue River back to a more natural cycle and restore the Gold Medal fishing status that stretch of river lost in 2016.