An “essential” Colorado River water conservation program faces duel threats as the new Trump administration attempts to freeze its funding and a lapse in authorization creates delays that may make participation unfeasible this year for many farmers.
The pilot program has paid water users — mostly farmers and ranchers — in the four states in the Colorado River’s Upper Basin to voluntarily use less river water than their water rights allow. Farmers from Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah could choose not to irrigate some of their land or to grow a crop that uses less water.
Over the last two years, the Upper Colorado River Commission has spent $44.6 million to conserve 101,441 acre-feet of water, enough water to supply more than 200,000 households with a year’s worth of water.
But federal lawmakers late last year failed to pass a bill that would reauthorize the System Conservation Pilot Program, or SCPP. That lapse has forced the program’s managers to cancel plans to begin accepting applications early this month for 2025 projects and has jeopardized the effort’s near-term future.
Congressional leaders from Colorado and other states in the drought-stricken river basin on Tuesday filed legislation that would restart the System Conservation Pilot Program. The bill — the Colorado River Basin System Conservation Extension Act — is sponsored by lawmakers from both political parties who represent Colorado, Wyoming and Utah.
“The Colorado River’s survival depends on our ability to adapt to a drier future,” Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, said of the reauthorization bill. “With SCPP, we spend less time hand wringing, and more energy finding innovative ways to conserve the West’s most precious resource.”
But even if the bill passes, program leaders may need to find a new source of federal funding.
President Donald Trump, on the first day of his new administration, issued an executive order freezing spending from the Inflation Reduction Act. That law was part of billions of dollars of investments by former President Joe Biden’s administration into clean energy and climate change-related projects, including $125 million for the SCPP.
While more than $80 million remains allocated for the SCPP, the program cannot continue until Congress reauthorizes it and the administration allows Inflation Reduction Act spending again.
“The SCPP is essential to exploring alternative methods to severe water regulation during droughts for the citizens of Wyoming,” U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, a Republican, said in a news release. “It is critical that we reauthorize this program and continue exploring hydrological conditions in the Upper Basin.”
Water conservation programs like the SCPP are a crucial part of tense ongoing negotiations between the seven states that rely on the Colorado River over how to allocate the shrinking river’s water in the coming decades.
The river makes modern life possible across a vast swath of the West, providing water for approximately 40 million people and irrigating 5.5 million acres of farm land. It also provides habitat for unique and endangered species. Two decades of drought pushed the river’s two major reservoirs to their lowest levels since being filled, and climate change continues to reduce the amount of water available in the river.
The SCPP is a key part of water conservation efforts in the four states in the Upper Basin. Negotiators from those states have said the Upper Basin should not face mandatory water cuts as the river’s supplies dwindle, but they have promised to continue voluntary water conservation programs, like the SCPP.
“The upper division states are learning a lot,” said Chuck Cullom, the executive director of the Upper Colorado River Commission, which administers the SCPP. “They are learning lessons from these programs, both from a water management and regulatory perspective, that are helping them answer questions that they will need to answer for post-2026 Colorado River operations.”
Farmers have used SCPP money to upgrade their water infrastructure to be more drought resilient and to try out new management practices, he said.
“This funding helps them experiment with crops or practices that, from their perspective, will provide them more resiliency as they face an uncertain water future,” Cullom said.
In 2023, the program spent $16 million on 64 projects across the four Upper Basin states and conserved 37,810 acre-feet of water.
Even more people participated the following year. In 2024, the program spent $28.6 million to conserve 63,631 acre-feet of water in 110 projects — a 79% increase in the amount of water conserved.
The lapse in the program may already have excluded many agricultural producers from applying, Cullom said. Farmers need to buy seed, fertilizer and other equipment long before the spring planting season begins.
“It is already extremely late for agricultural projects (to plan and incorporate) this program in their 2025 plans,” he said. “We recognize that.”
While the vast majority of SCPP participants thus far have come from agriculture, cities and businesses can apply as well. They could still apply for the 2025 program if it is reauthorized and funded, Cullom said.
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