Current work in wildlife, rivers, public lands, and climate

DENVER — On October 17, 2024, a federal court handed WildEarth Guardians and partners—Save the Colorado, The Environmental Group, Living Rivers, Waterkeeper Alliance, and Sierra Club—a major win in their legal challenge to a Clean Water Act permit needed for the ongoing expansion of the Moffat Collection System and Gross Dam in Colorado. Yesterday’s federal court decision held that the issuance of the dredge and fill permit for Denver Water’s project by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers violated the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. The Court has directed the parties to confer regarding appropriate remedies to address the Corps’ legal violations.

“After years of fighting in court, we are grateful for this common-sense decision and look forward to sitting down with Denver Water and the Corps to figure out how to protect clean and flowing headwaters streams, intact forests, and downstream communities threatened by this ill-advised project,” said Daniel Timmons, Wild Rivers Program Director with WildEarth Guardians.

At the core of the case was the Corps’ inappropriate, unlawful narrow framing of the “purpose and need” for the project. That fundamental flaw resulted in the Corps’ focusing narrowly on the expansion of Gross Dam and Reservoir and “completely avoid[ing] serious consideration” of all other possible ways to meet future water supply needs. If completed, the unlawfully-approved expansion project would result in the tallest roller-compacted concrete dam in the nation and triple the size of the existing reservoir.

The Corps also found the Corps’ failure to assess the impact of climate change on hydrology inexcusable because “[t]he Corps in this case considered the practicability of a dam—a construction project entirely dependent on storing water. The salience of the consideration makes it absolutely critical to at least explore whether increased aridity due to climate change will undermine the construction project’s capacity to store water.”

As the Court recognized, the Colorado River Basin, the main water source for communities across Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah and Mexico, is in a crisis of increased demand and reduced supply, magnifying shortfalls of an already over-allocated system and facing forecasts of worsening climate change driven water shortages. Yet Denver Water continues to move forward with building the largest dam in Colorado history, a project that would further drain the Upper Colorado River at the expense of downstream users and ecosystems. Recognizing this important context, the Court noted that “the cracked foundation of the Colorado River’s management system all but demands skepticism over any proposal that will affect the hydrology of the Colorado River basin.”

The conservation groups are represented by the Washington, DC public interest law firm Eubanks & Associates, PLLC. For more information about their successful track record of precedent-setting legal victories, please visit www.eubankslegal.com.

Gross Dam by Wikimedia Commons.

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WildEarth Guardians is a conservation nonprofit whose mission is to protect and restore the wildlife, wild places, wild rivers, and health of the American West. Guardians has offices in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington, and over 179,000 members and supporters worldwide.