Nine Basin Bulletin - Winter 2024
Hi! Welcome to our 2024 Winter Nine Basin Bulletin. We wish you a happy holiday season, and we are excited to share upcoming water events and other water happenings! The Nine Basins Bulletin is the Southwestern Water Conservation District (SWCD) and the Water Information Program (WIP) newsletter.
Upcoming Water Events
SWCD Events
01-23-2025 SWCD Special Board Meeting (Legislative Call) - Tentative - Online
02-12 &13 -2025 SWCD Regular Board Meeting
03-28-2025 SWCD Annual Seminar - Water Reimagined: Strategies for a Changing World
Other Events
01-29-25 through 01-31-25 Colorado Water Congress Annual Meeting - more information can be found here
04-28-2025 through 04-30-2025 - Colorado Growing Water Smart - more information below
SWCD Annual Water Seminar - Save The Date
See our seminar webpage for more information: Southwest Water Seminar - Southwestern Water Conservation District
SWCD Announcements
The Southwestern Water Conservation District was busy this fall and early winter! In partnership with SGM Engineering, the Four Corners Water Center, and Rocky Mountain PBS, we held our fourth annual water connections event (pictured below) with our largest audience yet! With over 130 individuals in attendance, we watched the Ute Water Legacy, a film created by Christi Bode and produced by Rocky Mountain PBS. We then had an interactive panel with individuals who were in the movie. Please visit our Water Connections page to learn more about the event, and don't miss next year! In October, SWCD had its regular board meeting spanning October 9th and 10th.
During the board meeting, the board moved to approve an assigned funds policy and approved updates to their strategic plan. The board also received an update from staff on their Water Conservation and Infrastructure Partnership and BOR B2E Funding Application. Our December Board meeting was held virtually. During our December board meeting, we approved our budgets for 2025 and talked through our 2025 Calendar.
Growing Water Smart Workshop
Do you represent a municipality, or county, and are within the Colorado River District and Southwestern Water Conservation District service area? If so, you and your team may be eligible for the Growing Water Smart Workshop. The Growing Water Smart workshop brings together community decision-makers in water and land use planning to collaborate on sustainable water use through public engagement, planning, communication, and policy implementation. Sonoran Institute and the Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy are now accepting applications from municipalities, counties, and district members for the upcoming Western Slope Growing Water Smart workshop.
APPLY TODAY: | Colorado Growing Water Smart Request for Applications
SWCD Grant Highlight:
As the year wraps up and final reports flow in, we wanted to take a moment to highlight one of our grantees this year, the Tribal Water Media Fellowship.
Fort Lewis College’s Four Corners Water Center (FLC) and partners KSUT and Rocky Mountain PBS (RMPBS) introduced the Tribal Water Media Fellowship Program (TWMF) in 2023 to diversify the voices and professionals that communicate to the public about water issues, with a special emphasis on water topics and Indigenous communities. Water challenges are reaching critical levels in the southwestern United States and the Colorado River Basin, and we recognize that the inclusion of diverse voices in decision-making leads to better outcomes and more resilient solutions to these challenges. This program brought in its second cohort of fellows in 2024, benefitting from FLC’s ongoing research and scholarship in water and natural resource management and supporting FLC’s diverse student population, which comprises over 40% American Indian and Alaska Native students and over 50% students of color. This program trained students to amplify the voices of historically marginalized communities and helped students from diverse backgrounds learn to use media to tell stories in a nuanced and collaborative manner while building their professional networks so that they can explore critically important careers in communication.
SWCD attended the annual Tribal Water Media Fellowship Showcase and were more than impressed, if you have time this holiday season we recommend watching and listening to all the amazing projects from this years fellows.
See all the fellow's projects here: Tribal Water Media Fellowship | Four Corners Water
Funding
Don’t Know Where to Start?
Current water project funding opportunities are a lot to take in. That’s part of why the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) hired regional water plan grant managers–to help project proponents navigate this once-in-a-generation opportunity to implement projects statewide. Contact Laura Spann (based in Durango), laura.spann@state.co.us, 720-916-7723 if you need help getting started.
Other Resources:
- Senator John Hickenlooper Grant Navigation Webiste
- Opportunity Navigator CWCB has compiled this database to serve as a tool for people and organizations across Colorado to navigate all available funding opportunities for water projects in a single place.
- Irrigation Infrastructure Resource Hub Have a water funding need but don’t know where to start? DARCA and the River Network teamed up to create this hub.
- Water Plan Grants The CWCB offers grants to advance the goals of the Colorado Water Plan. Adding storage? Have a multi-benefit project? Lots of project partners, collaboration? An innovative or landscape-scale project? It might fit well here. Roundtable letters of support, while not required, add value to your application. If you want their consideration, the Southwest Basin Roundtable requests a short proposal and presentation at a meeting.
- NEW! CWP Wetland and Riparian Restoration and Enhancement Projects
Want to apply for federal water grants but don’t have the staff capacity?
- The Colorado Water Conservation Board’s Federal Technical Assistance Program can help you review the many federal funding opportunities currently available for water projects and prepare and submit federal grant applications. The Technical Assistance Program can also help enhance your projects with feasibility studies, planning, and partial design/engineering so that they stand out in the highly competitive federal grant process. The Technical Assistance Program is accepting applications through fall 2024. For more information, visit the Technical Assistance Program website or contact Michael Regan at michael.regan@state.co.us
- WaterSMART Program Portal This site houses Reclamation's schedule for funding through WaterSMART and Aquatic Ecosystem Restoration and opportunities for Multi-Benefit Projects to Improve Watershed Health.
- Colorado Wildlife Mitigation Funding: Here's a list of state, federal, and private funding available for a wide variety of wildfire mitigation projects, including Watershed Health.
Career Opportunities
Please email morock@swwcd.org if you know of any positions you'd like to share in this newsletter.