Model and Strategy
Founded in 1989, Western Resource Advocates (WRA) fights climate change and its impacts to sustain the environment, economy, and people of the West. Its team of policy experts, scientists, economists, and attorneys engage directly with state and local policymakers, resource managers, and communities to advance clean energy; protect air, land, water, and wildlife; and sustain the livelihoods of people in the West.
One focus of WRA’s work is the Colorado River, which provides drinking water to over 35 million people, irrigates over 5.5 million acres of farmland, is home to 30 Indigenous communities, supports world class recreation, and sustains 30 endemic fish species and critical river habitat. It is also one of America’s most endangered rivers.
Short-term fixes over the last 20 years have failed to address the scale of the challenge confronting the Colorado River. Decisions made over the next few years will determine the future of the river and the West as we know it. We must use this historic opportunity to put in place a forward-thinking plan that will protect the river and all who rely on it. While the hundred-year-old policy foundation may be crumbling, we have the tools and opportunity to fix it. We can reimagine a new, sustainable future for the Colorado River if we act now.
WRA has identified a set of strategic policy interventions that — when advanced together — will decrease water demands across the municipal, agricultural, and industrial sectors, and protect the Colorado River at a scale necessary to create meaningful change. These include basin-wide river management and governance policies that re-balance water demand and supplies; state-wide policies to decrease water use and improve river health and water security; and state- and basin-wide policies that ensure healthy flows for ecosystems in critical river reaches at critical times of the year.
Bringing experts, decision makers, and advocates together, WRA’s goals for the Colorado River initiative over the next two years include:
- By 2025, Colorado enacts legislative policy and has rules in place to reduce consumptive use and keep saved water instream to benefit the Colorado River.
- The Lower Basin states (Arizona, California, and Nevada) will accelerate demand reductions and the Upper Basin states (Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming) will level off or reduce use on a smaller scale, while implementing drought operations that benefit stream flow and sensitive species. Across the Basin, water users are incentivized to reduce their use through tapping into billions of dollars available in federal funding, including the Inflation Reduction Act.
- Communities in Arizona, Colorado, and Utah, despite growing populations and economies, have committed to actions that reduce their per capita use enough to maintain municipal “flat” overall statewide demands. Unnecessary new projects that aren’t economically and environmentally viable are halted or dramatically reduced in size or impact.
- Repurposed agricultural water across the entire Colorado River Basin annually keeps at least 300,000-acre feet in the Colorado River as compared to use in 2020.
- At least 250 river miles with high ecosystem value on the Colorado, Green, Gunnison, and Yampa rivers (all tributaries to the Colorado) have new protections that secure healthy river flows. This work includes securing water that protects riparian habitat and critical species, particularly fish.
Impact
WRA’s efforts over the past several years have secured significant funding, policy changes, and river-based protections for the Colorado River:
New Funding for Rivers: As leaders in a coalition of conservation groups in Colorado, WRA helped secure more than $35 million in state funding over the past two years. In 2023 in New Mexico, WRA secured $7.5 million for the state’s Strategic Water Reserve, which pays water users to keep water in rivers to help meet inter-state water delivery obligations and protect endangered fish.
New Policies: In 2022, WRA wrote and helped pass a“turf replacement bill in Colorado that sets up an incentive program, paying communities to remove water-intensive turfgrass, thereby decreasing the strain many communities place on the Colorado River. This program saw 39 communities apply in the first year and is growing; WRA is now exploring a similar program in New Mexico. In Utah, the 2022 legislature passed a bill that devoted $200 million to install water meters to measure use of untreated outdoor irrigation water, something shown to result in significant reductions in use. The framework and support for this bill began through a series of workshops WRA hosted with Utah communities several years ago.
New River Protection: In 2022, through a long-term partnership in the Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery Program, WRA supported the U.S. Fish & Wildlife to schedule the release of “drought operations” water from Flaming Gorge Reservoir to benefit endangered fish, river recreation, and hydropower. In 2023, WRA’s prior technical research and strategic outreach supported a decision by the Colorado Water Conservation Board to claim “instream flow” water rights for the environment on more than 40 miles of rivers in the Gunnison River basin. WRA and a consultant fisheries expert are now training a network of river advocates to develop additional proposals to protect streams in other tributaries of the Colorado River.
Leadership
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Jon Goldin-Dubois
President
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Maria Najera
Government Affairs Director
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Tahlia Bear
Indigenous Peoples Engagement Manager
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Bart Miller
Healthy Rivers Director
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John Berggren
Healthy Rivers Regional Policy Manager
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Laura Belanger
Healthy Rivers Senior Policy Advisor