Click the link to read the article on the Aspen Journalism website (Heather Sackett):
March 31, 2026
Facing an abysmal snowpack and spring runoff, the state’s largest Front Range water provider has enacted an agreement that lets it take more water from the Western Slope for a limited time.
On March 18, Denver Water put the Shoshone call reduction agreement into effect with water rights owner Xcel Energy, which allows Denver Water to divert more water from the headwaters of the Colorado River in an attempt to alleviate shortages. The agreement reduces the call at the Shoshone hydroelectric plant in Glenwood Canyon by half, from 1,408 cfs to 704 cfs.
The call reduction can only be implemented when two drought conditions are met: an April to July streamflow forecast for the Colorado River measured at the Kremmling stream gauge must be at 85% or less than average and the forecasted storage for the 10 largest Denver Water reservoirs for July 1 must be at or below 80% full.
The March water supply outlook from the National Resources Conservation Service for the Colorado headwaters from Kremmling to Glenwood Springs was 56% of normal. Experts expect conditions to have worsened when the April forecast comes out next week.
This winter is shaping up to be one of the worst on record and since water supplies depend on snowmelt, municipal water providers have been quick to implement cutbacks this spring. Last week, Denver Water declared a Stage 1 Drought and will impose two-day-a-week outdoor watering restrictions this summer.
“In the wake of the worst snowpack conditions in some 50 years of records at Denver Water, we began exercising the Shoshone Relaxation Agreement with Xcel Energy starting March 18,” Denver Water’s Media Relations Coordinator Todd Hartman said in an email. “We have taken this step only one other time under the 2007 agreement with Xcel (2013) and we don’t do so lightly.”
According to the agreement, Denver Water will be able to divert additional water until May 20.
The water provider, which serves about 1.5 million people on the Front Range, gets roughly 50% of its supply from the Colorado River basin and brings it across the Continental Divide through a highly engineered system of tunnels and reservoirs that facilitate the so-called transmountain diversions.
The Shoshone water rights, which date to 1902, are some of the largest and most powerful on the mainstem of the Colorado River in the state. They can command the river’s flows all the way to its headwaters, ensuring water keeps flowing downstream on the Western Slope.
When the plant’s turbines are spinning, it can “call” for its full water right, effectively forcing upstream water users with junior rights – like Denver Water – to cut back. And because the water is returned to the river after it runs through the plant’s turbines, Shoshone benefits downstream cities, irrigators, recreators and the environment on the Western Slope.
