Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Elise Schmelzer). Here’s an excerpt:
May 22, 2026
For more than a year, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has withheld $40 million awarded to the Colorado River District for the purchase of the water rights attached to Xcel Energy’s aging Shoshone Power Plant in Glenwood Canyon. The release of the federal funding brings the total amount secured for the purchase to $97 million — just shy of the $99 million needed for the project. For years, the river district — a taxpayer-funded agency based in Glenwood Springs that works to protect Western Slope water — has worked to purchase the rights from the utility. Its leaders want to ensure that, even in dry years, the billions of gallons of water the rights command continue to flow west through the canyon and to the communities, wildlife habitats and farms downstream. The district and other Western Slope entities feared the certainty of the flows would be threatened if another purchaser — like a Front Range utility — were able to snag the rights first. The purchase is a “once-in-a-generation” investment in securing Western Slope water supplies, said Andy Mueller, the general manager of the Colorado River District, in a news release Friday. The federal dollars will add to the $20 million contributed by the Colorado Water Conservation Board and the $37 million raised by the district from Western Slope governments, organizations and irrigators.
“This award is a major breakthrough in our coalition’s effort to permanently secure historic flows on the Colorado River,” he said…
The federal funding brings the Shoshone water rights deal — originally inked in 2023 — one step closer to completion. Xcel Energy still needs approval for the sale from Colorado’s public utility regulators, and the river district m