Click the link to read the article on the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel website (Dennis Webb). Here’s an excerpt:
September 10, 2025
Front Range utility giant Denver Water has thrown its support behind the effort by Colorado’s entire congressional delegation to get the Bureau of Reclamation to release previously announced drought-mitigation funding for 15 Colorado water projects, including $40 million to help acquire the Shoshone hydroelectric plant water rights on the Colorado River. In a Sept. 5 letter to the bureau’s acting commissioner, David Palumbo, and Scott Cameron, acting assistant Interior secretary for water and science, Denver Water CEO/Manager Alan Salazar voiced the utility’s support for the funding for 15 Colorado projects selected for the bureau’s Upper Colorado River Basin Environmental Drought Mitigation funding opportunity. The money is part of a category of funding also known as “Bucket 2” or “B2E.”
[…]
In the waning days of the Biden administration, the Bureau of Reclamation announced the Shoshone funding and tens of millions of dollars of funding for other water projects in the state. Among the other projects are about $25.6 million for drought mitigation in southwest Colorado, about $24.3 million for the Grand Mesa and Upper Gunnison watershed resiliency and aquatic connectivity project, $4.6 million for the Mesa Conservation District and Colorado West Land Trust to work on drought resiliency on local conserved lands, and $2.8 million for the Fruita Reservoir Dam removal project on Piñon Mesa. Most of that funding has been frozen under the Trump administration, although it did eventually agree to release nearly $12 million to the Orchard Mesa Irrigation District for water projects that were among the projects previously announced for funding…
Of particular interest particularly for West Slope water interests is the Shoshone funding. The Colorado River District is trying to close a $99 million deal with Xcel Energy to buy what are large and senior water rights associated with the plant in Glenwood Canyon. Those rights, due to their seniority, have helped protect flows into the canyon and downstream, and the river district wants to protect those water rights and their associated flows in cases when the plant isn’t operating, and should it eventually shut down. The federal funding is key to the fundraising effort to buy the water rights. The river district has proposed dedicating the Shoshone water rights to the Colorado Water Conservation Board for instream flow use, Salazar noted in his letter.
