A program that aims to cut water use in the overstretched Colorado River Basin will lapse this year after a federal bill to extend it stalled in Congress.
The program, called the System Conservation Pilot Program, relaunched in 2023 as part of a multistate effort to respond to prolonged drought in the Colorado River Basin. It pays volunteers — mostly farmers and ranchers — in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming to cut back on water use.
The Bureau of Reclamation’s authorization to spend money on the program, however, expired this year. Now, without a renewal, its future is unclear.
“We were all hopeful that the reauthorization legislation would pass in the lame-duck session,” said Anne Castle, federal representative to the Upper Colorado River Commission, which managed the conservation program. “It’s a disappointment.”
In 2023, the federal government gave $125 million to the program, to be spent by 2026, from the Inflation Reduction Act, the Democrats’ landmark climate change and health care bill under the Biden administration. So far, the program has spent about $44.6 million, according to the Upper Colorado River Commission.
U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, a Colorado Democrat, sponsored the bill, called Colorado River Basin System Conservation Extension Act, which aimed to reauthorize Reclamation’s ability to spend the money on the program. The Senate passed the measure Wednesday, but the House of Representatives left it on the chopping block as lawmakers raced to pass legislation to avoid a government shutdown.
Lawmakers will have to introduce a new bill in 2025 to kickstart the program again, and Hickenlooper plans to do so early in the year, spokesperson Anthony Rivera-Rodriguez said Monday.
A new measure is not a certain success: It will have to navigate a different Congressional composition and presidential administration. The program’s funding also faces uncertainty. President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to rescind unspent money allocated by the Inflation Reduction Act, according to news reports.
“We believe the money is still there. Reclamation just doesn’t have the authority to spend it yet,” said Chuck Cullom, executive director of the Upper Colorado River Commission.
For now, Colorado River officials are still exploring whether people will be able to participate in a program in 2025, he said.
“I recognize that the continued uncertainty and limited time for planning and preparation for the coming irrigation season is a tremendous burden on producers,” Cullom said.
In southwestern Colorado, Greg Vlaming, who has helped people navigate the program for the past two years, said people will join even if there is a short turnaround between applying for the program and putting projects into action in their fields.
“This is a bummer for sure,” said Vlaming, who owns Rocking V Soil and Water Conservation. “If it can get passed, and Hickenlooper, bless his heart, can push it through, we’ll get robust participation here again. Even at a late date, we will. It’s that valuable to the growers here.”
This year, the federal program paid 110 participants across four states about $28.6 million in taxpayer dollars to cut their water use by 63,631 acre-feet. In Colorado, it paid 46 participants $7.2 million to cut water use by 14,239 acre-feet this year.
One acre-foot roughly equals the annual use of two to three households. On average, the Upper Basin used about 4.6 million acre-feet of water per year from 2016 to 2020.
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4:05 AM MST on Dec 23, 202412:09 PM MST on Dec 23, 2024The program has been met with a mixed response. In 2023, federal and state officials had to launch the program on a short timeline, which led to frustration among potential participants.
In 2024, officials set standard rates for how much people would be compensated, a helpful change for many applicants. In Colorado, participants were paid $509 per acre-foot of water cut, enough to boost participation and interest in continuing the program.
Some have questioned whether the program is really conserving water, saying that farmers can participate and cut water on their land, but that water simply flows downstream and can be used by anyone else.
That’s not always the case: Water users in Vlaming’s area, the Dolores Water Conservancy District, decided to store the saved water in McPhee Reservoir to be used in future seasons.
“The program helped save, not a ton of water, but it did a lot and it helped growers try to identify and source other markets for other crops besides alfalfa, which I think is a critical shift for the agricultural market here to get away from the thirstier crops,” Vlaming said.
Now many potential participants will have to decide whether to go ahead and plant alfalfa — a dependable, profitable crop that uses more water — or to wait and see if they will be able to apply in 2025 and plant a crop that might use less water or better withstand drought.
“It’s a skinny margin already even with a lot of alfalfa in their rotations,” he said. “This just makes it tighter. I hate to be negative or foreboding, but it’s not a pretty picture going forward with less water here.”
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