Front Range water providers concerned about Shoshone water rights acquisition will get a hearing with Colorado Water Conservation Board

Four major Front Range water providers are concerned that the Colorado River District’s plan to purchase the Shoshone water rights on the Colorado River will cut into their supply, despite the Western Slope entity’s insistence that it will maintain the status quo through its acquisition. 

The Colorado Water Conservation Board will hold a hearing in September to formally address the providers’ objections. 

The Shoshone water rights — among the oldest and largest non-consumptive rights on the Colorado River — are tied to the hydroelectric plant located along the Colorado River in Glenwood Canyon. The Colorado River District, a government entity that represents Western Slope water users in 15 counties, is leading the effort to purchase the rights from Xcel Energy for $98.5 million. 

The rights — which include a 1905 senior right tied to the Shoshone Power Plant and a secondary, junior right established in 1929 for other water users, including Front Range providers — are among the oldest and largest non-consumptive rights on the Colorado River.  

“The Shoshone water rights, although physically impacting a relatively short reach of stream because of its magnitude and location of operation, can have an effect on a large part of the entire state of Colorado,” according to a May staff memo from the Colorado Water Conservation Board. 

In acquiring the rights, the Colorado River District has repeatedly stated its intent is to maintain the status quo for all water users — including agricultural uses, municipal water providers and recreational flows — regardless of what happens with the power plant (as the current rights are tied to its operation). 

“It is our intent to preserve the historic flows commanded by the Shoshone water rights, not to enlarge them,” said Matt Aboussie, the district’s communications director. 

As of July 1, the district has raised around $57.2 million toward the nearly $99 million price from the state legislature, its board and the various Western Slope municipalities and utilities it serves. While it was granted $40 million from the Inflation Reduction Act during the final days of the Biden administration, these funds have been tied up under the new presidential administration. 

Aboussie said that the district remains actively engaged with federal elected officials, namely Sen. Michael Bennet and Rep. Jeff Hurd, to unfreeze these federal dollars. 

Currently, the Colorado River flows around 166 miles through Grand Lake, Kremmling, and Glenwood Canyon before it reaches the Shoshone Power Plant. Reaching the plant, water is diverted, used to generate electricity, and returned to the river. 

The four Front Range providers — Denver Water, Northern Water, Aurora Water, and Colorado Springs Utility — have also expressed a desire to maintain the historic flow regime, but object to the numbers the river district has assigned to the flows. 

The providers claim the district’s analysis erroneously expands the current Shoshone Rights, which they say would impact their ability to provide water to their Front Range consumers.  

“If, as the River District asserts, the status quo will be maintained, this acquisition can be a win-win for both the Front Range and the West Slope,” wrote Marshall Brown, Aurora Water’s general manager, in a June 9 letter to the Colorado Water Conservation Board.  “We have significant concerns that the methodology used to quantify historic use for both the senior and junior Shoshone rights overstates those amounts, effectively expanding the rights and altering the historic flow regime.”

Colorado Springs Utility said the expansion of Shoshone’s rights could reduce the water available for diversion and, in turn, impact its rights on the Blue River and interest in the rights for the Homestake Reservoir project. 

“Any reduction in water supplies currently available for a growing community like Colorado Springs results in increased reliance on water derived by changing agricultural water rights in other basins to meet their customers’ demands and limits our ability to fully develop our currently decreed Colorado River basin supplies,” according to the Utilities’ June 9 letter written by Michael Gustafson, Colorado Springs’ senior attorney. 

The Front Range providers believe the district’s analysis could overstate historic use by around 36%, according to the Aurora Water letter. 

The current proposal from the Colorado River District before the Colorado Water Conservation Board is to reach an instream agreement with the state for environmental use as a part of the acquisition process. This agreement seeks to preserve and improve the natural environment near the plant, regardless of its operation, according to the district’s May application to the board. 

In May, the water board launched a 120-day deadline to make its determination, which includes a period to contest the acquisition of this instream flow use. 

Within this period, the four Front Range entities requested that the Colorado Water Conservation Board hold a hearing to ensure the acquisition does not harm current water uses. The board granted the hearing at a special meeting on Tuesday, July 1, and will schedule the proceeding for September. 

In a July 1 statement, the Colorado River District said it takes the contests around the historic use analysis seriously, but it expressed concerns that the Front Range providers are asking the board to “encroach on the jurisdiction of water court.”

“Colorado’s water courts, not the (Colorado Water Conservation Board), have the exclusive legal authority to determine the historical use of a water right in the context of a change case,” Aboussie said. “That process is specifically designed to protect all water users through a rigorous, fact-based legal review.” 

Colorado’s Water Court would be the final stop for the district’s acquisition of the rights, which it is aiming to complete by Dec. 31, 2027. 

Aboussie said the district remains committed to having transparent and open conversations around the providers’ concerns through the “appropriate legal channels that are designed for these issues.”

“We will not, however, buckle to political pressure to diminish the flows in the Colorado River to create a windfall of additional water for unfettered growth in the metropolitan Front Range,” he added.