Colorado River Day Update: “Dam Trump, Not Our Rivers!”

Hello Amazing Friends of the Colorado River!

As the sheer chaos continues to escalate surrounding President Trump in Washington D.C., his appointees continue to mount and carry out his radical anti-environmental agenda. Just yesterday, the anti-environmental lawyer, David Bernhardt, was appointed to be second in charge of the Dept. of Interior, and in charge of the “Colorado River Program” for the Interior. Bernhardt now joins Ryan Zinke as a one-two punch against the public lands and rivers of the American West. 

At the same time, the Trump administration has now permitted two new dams on the Colorado River and is potentially engaging with even more. Just a few weeks ago, Trump’s Army Corps of Engineers gave a permit to the Moffat Collection System Project, which is a massive dam expansion in Boulder County, Colorado, to drain another 4.5 BILLION gallons of water out of the headwaters of the Colorado River.

What are we doing about it?

We have assembled a coalition of environmental-group partners, hired lawyers, and we are preparing for the legal fight in federal district court against both projects. The Colorado River is already the most dammed and drained river on planet Earth, climate change threatens it even more, the reservoirs on the river can’t be refilled right now, and they are proposing even more dams and diversions? That’s insanity. And in the words of our boardmember, Dan Beard, former Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, “It’s insane to be further damming and draining the Colorado River.”

We are fighting to protect and restore rivers throughout the Colorado River basin too:

In Colorado, we are eyeing a proposed dam fight in Aspen, another proposed dam fight on the White River in the northwest part of the state, the potential to help with the restoration efforts on the Dolores River in the southwest part of the state, and the potential to help protect Grand Lake which is the largest natural lake in the state of Colorado.

In Wyoming, we’ve set our piercing eyes on the fight against the effort to massively increase the diversion of water out of Fontenelle Dam and Reservoir. In Utah, we’ve locked arms with colleagues fighting the proposed Lake Powell Pipeline. In Arizona, we are eyeing the Big One, Glen Canyon Dam, and a potential fight against that Dam to right the biggest wrong in Colorado River history.

Throughout all of our work, we make news! In fact, we are probably the most quoted environmental organization working to protect the Colorado River. In the last two months, we’ve been quoted in the Denver Post, Boulder Daily Camera, E&E News, Water Deeply, Sky High News, Durango Herald, Summit Daily, and others. Combining our legal work and our vocal advocacy, we are “Walking The Talk.”

And it’s Walking The Talk that is exactly needed to not just fight the Trump administration, but also to address the extraordinary threats facing the Colorado River basin. Fracking, mining, attacks on public lands ownership, new proposed dams, increasing threats to endangered species — the list goes on and on.

What Save The Colorado tries to do is “Just One Thing” — protect and restore the Colorado River and its tributaries. We laser focus on the threats to the river — several new dam proposals in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah — and tearing down or rejiggering other dams to achieve our mission. In these times when everyone is feeling under attack and overwhelmed, perhaps the best thing we can all do is “Just One Thing” and do it as well as possible.

We have an amazing board of directors who guide us and support our work, and we live and breathe the words of our boardmember Mark Dubois, “Rivers are alive and beautiful, and we must revel in their beauty and all they can teach us.”

Thank you for your support!