Click the link to read the article on the Colorado Public Radio website (Tom Hesse). Here’s an excerpt:
November 9, 2026
Western Colorado saw paltry water flows this summer, but in some parts of Western Colorado, that depressed runoff highlighted infrastructure improvements that are slowly making the region more resilient to drought.
“When you really see the difference is in summers like this — when we just have a little bit of water, and we have to be extremely intentional and efficient with it,” Melissa Wills, a program manager with the Colorado River District, said. “If you are relying on 100-year-old infrastructure, it’s going to be a difficult summer.”
Wills manages the Community Funding Partnership, a program funded through a 2020 ballot question. That measure increased property taxes by almost $2 for every $100,000 in value to support water projects and passed with more than 70% support during the 2020 general election. In the five years the program has been funded, it’s dolled out around $34 million in grant funds across Western Colorado, funding everything from canal improvements to studies researching alternative forage plants better suited to drier climates…Wills said most of the grants are meant to give local entities a leg up on applying for bigger-dollar prizes. An irrigation district may not stand out in the Bureau of Reclamation grant field, but an irrigation district with a $50,000 head start on their proposal is a different story…
In the Roaring Fork Valley, funds generated by the 2020 ballot measure contributed to a multi-agency effort to restore a part of the Crystal River that runs through Carbondale’s Riverfront Park. The restoration included removing invasive plants, stabilizing the riverbank and creating a low-flow channel for the river that served to improve fish habitat and flow to one of the town’s major ditch diversions. Heather Lewin with the Roaring Fork Conservancy said the restored river saw better streamflows this year, despite the poor snowpack, compared to past low-water years. Notably, Lewin said, the improvements allow the city to avoid having to create temporary “push-up” dams in low-water years when heavy equipment was needed to divert meager flows to keep water going where it needed to.
“In those low flow years, that cobble push-up dam spanned the whole reach of the river along with the damage that it did moving about a quarter mile upstream, instream, pushing cobbles in a stretch where you only had maybe an inch or two of water to begin with,” Lewin said. “The instream benefits of not creating that additional stressor in a year when we’re dealing with low flows and high temperature already has a huge benefit to that reach as well.”
Water savings from the project are difficult to measure, but Lewin said the improvements in fish habitat and flows to the diversion ditch have been notable. She’s hopeful the restoration effort can be replicated in other places.
