First, the good news:  the Colorado General Assembly passed Colorado TU’s top priority bill for 2023, SB23-270, “Projects to Restore Natural Stream Systems”.  The not-so-good news:  the bill was significantly weakened from the version introduced before it was passed.  The net result is a positive step forward, but one that doesn’t yet address some critical issues for river restoration projects and potential water rights administration.

Healthy rivers and watersheds provide broad-based benefits to all Coloradans – providing habitat for fish and wildlife; supporting our State’s robust recreation economy; improving wildfire resilience, drought mitigation, and flood safety; and promoting water quality for all those who rely on it from fish to farms to cities and towns statewide. But over the last 200 years, more than half of Colorado’s 105,000 stream miles and river corridors have been significantly degraded.

As introduced, SB23-270 would have clarified where stream restoration could occur without water right enforcement actions. Minor restoration projects such as bank stabilization, channel narrowing, or emergency post-fire recovery work would not face water rights administration, while larger projects to restore stream, floodplain, and watershed health – such as beaver dam analogs, fish barriers for native species recovery, and floodplain reconnection efforts – would have been given a rebuttable presumption of not causing injury to downstream water uses so long as they did not expand water surface area along a given river by more than a specified amount. The bill would have provided a solution to the lack of clarity and consistency across the state on how stream restoration may impact water rights and hence may or may not need administration. With the bipartisan infrastructure law offering significant federal funding in the coming years, it also would have positioned Colorado for a once-in-a-generation opportunity to support watershed and river health through those federal dollars. 

Ultimately, legislators were uncomfortable advancing the complete package of SB23-270 and instead narrowed its scope substantially. The bill passed by the General Assembly and sent to Gov. Polis will address the minor stream restoration projects and those that have taken place or received their permits before August 1 of this summer. That is a positive and important step but leaves the question of how to enable future restoration projects in 2024 and beyond.

Colorado TU looks forward to working with legislators in the coming months to tackle that remaining need with legislation for 2024.  Among the projects that we hope can be accommodated are “process-based” restoration efforts such as beaver dam analogs that help improve riparian health and sustain water tables and thus stream flows. We additionally would like to see fish barriers – used to isolate native fish restoration areas from downstream populations of non-native fish – and replanting of native willows and cottonwoods incorporated as restoration activities that presumably should not trigger water rights administration.

Aspen Journalism has an excellent story outlining the issues surrounding SB23-270, which you can read here.

A big thanks to the TU volunteers who reached out to their State Senators in support of this bill.  We made one crucial first step with this bill as passed – and Colorado TU remains committed to fishing the job with further legislation in 2024.