Hi Friends of the Colorado River, As 2024 slips past us, we reflect on our…
Colorado River Update: We’re Roaring Into 2025 To Make a Consequential Difference!
Hi Friends of the Colorado River,
I predict that 2025 will be a fascinating year. With the change in the federal administration in Washington D.C., we’re likely to see some changes that will be bad and that we will lean hard against. We might also see some changes that are better for freer flowing rivers and the Colorado River itself. Through it all, we will keep our noses on the ground — like a hound dog at full-speed chasing a jackrabbit across the desert — looking for opportunities to deploy our unique, aggressive, litigious, and outspoken model of advocacy. That’s what we do!
What are the consequential issues racing forward in 2025?
First, the Bureau of Reclamation is moving forward with its big Environmental Impact Statement about how to manage the two big dams and reservoirs — Glen Canyon/Powell, and Hoover/Mead. We are keeping a close eye on everything that’s happening, especially as it pertains to the future of Glen Canyon Dam, a truly deadbeat dam that we believe must eventually be decommissioned.
Second, and related, the Colorado River has only been allowed to be (mis)managed the last few years because the Biden Administration parachuted in with billions of dollars which paid farmers to temporarily stop farming. Without that money, Glen Canyon Dam and Powell Reservoir may have already reached “dead pool.” It’s completely unclear if the new Trump Administration will continue this massive multi-billion dollar subsidy to prop up the system. Through it all, we are keeping a close eye on any opportunity for consequential and systemic change that allows the River to flow more freely.
Finally — and this has been our biggest campaign and most of our work for the last 15 years — as the Colorado River system collapses, every state is trying to hoard and store more water by building new dams, diversions, and pipelines. So far, we’ve stood in the path of every single project, and we will try to continue that stance throughout 2025.
We fully recognize that every other stakeholder has a political and legal right to be at the negotiating table — cities, farms, industries, tribes — but we may be the ONLY organization that solely speaks for the ecological health of the Rivers themselves. In 2025, we will continue that singular focus, and we will continue our hard-edged watchdog persistence.
At the end of 2024, we asked you for financial support to continue our work in 2025, and you delivered! And so we will deliver as well by continuing to protect the Rivers in Colorado and across the Southwest.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT
Gary