Colorado River Water Conservation Program Remains Stalled in Us House

A dry summer in Colorado and across the Colorado River Basin is ratcheting up the pressure to cut back on water use, fast, but one federal conservation program has been stalled in Congress since June.

The reason why isn’t clear to U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, a Democrat who represents Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District.

The program, called the System Conservation Pilot Program, pays people in four Western states, including Colorado, to voluntarily and temporarily cut back on their water use. Officials re-launched it in 2022, with $125 million in federal funds, as a two-decade drought tightened water supplies across the basin. It initially ran from 2015 to 2018 and restarted in summer 2023.