Aspen Journalism: Extended Shoshone hydro plant outages add urgency to water rights campaign

The Shoshone Hydropower Plant in Glenwood Canyon was not operating for nearly all of 2023 and more than half of 2024, adding urgency to a campaign seeking to secure the plant’s water rights for the Western Slope. 

According to records from the Colorado Division of Water Resources, the Shoshone Hydropower Plant was not operating from Feb. 28, 2023, until Aug. 8, 2024. According to Michelle Aguayo, a spokesperson from Xcel Energy, the company that owns the plant, there was a rockfall which forced an outage as well as maintenance which impacted operations during that time period.

In 2024, the plant has been down for 221 days; in 2023 for 307 days; in 2022 for 91 days; and in 2021 for 143 days. Water Resources Division 5 Engineer James Heath said he began tracking Shoshone outages in 2021 when they began to happen more frequently, starting with the post-Grizzly Creek fire mudslides in Glenwood Canyon.

---

---

“It was all these extended outages and just being able to have some sort of record of what was going on,” Heath said. “I kept getting questions from the parties on how many days we were operating ShOP and what the priorities were on those different days.”

The recent extended outages of the plant increase the urgency of the effort by the Colorado River Water Conservation District to acquire Shoshone’s water rights, which are some of the oldest and most powerful non-consumptive rights on the main stem of the Colorado River. If the plant were to shut down permanently, it would threaten the Western Slope’s water supply. The water rights could be at risk of being abandoned or acquired by a Front Range entity. 

---

---

At a tour of the Shoshone plant in October, hosted by the Water for Colorado Coalition, River District Director of Strategic Partnerships Amy Moyer explained why the Shoshone water rights are important for improving water security and climate resilience on the Western Slope. 

“As we’re sitting here in the iconic Glenwood Canyon. … It is a beautiful place, but we have an active highway, a railroad, a hydro power plant — all nestled in this tiny canyon that has experienced its fair share of natural hazards and risks over the years,” Moyer said. “When we’re looking at the level of risk, that is why we are looking for permanent protections for these water rights and why we have a willing partner in Xcel Energy realizing that they had an incredible asset that was meaningful to Colorado’s Western Slope and the Colorado River itself.”

Shoshone outage protocol

When the plant’s two turbines are up and running, they can generate 15 megawatts of hydropower using two water rights: a water right for 1,250 cubic feet per second that dates to 1902 and another for 158 cfs from 1929. 

In December 2023 the Colorado River Water Conservation District inked a deal with Xcel to purchase these water rights for $98.5 million to ensure the water keeps flowing west permanently. 

When the Shoshone plant is operating, it can command the river’s flow by drawing 1,408 cfs of water downstream through placing a call. This means upstream junior water rights holders — some of which are Front Range water providers that take flows from the mountainous headwaters of the Colorado River across the Continental Divide — must leave enough water in the river to meet the plant’s needs. After it runs through the turbines to make power, the plant releases the water back into the river, where it is then available to other downstream uses like irrigators and endangered fish in the Grand Valley. 

Since 2016, there has been an agreement in place that ensures water keeps flowing west even when the hydro plant is down for repairs. ShOP stands for the Shoshone Outage Protocol, an agreement among multiple water users that mimics a call. 

But there are limitations to ShOP that make it less effective and reliable than a call, and that makes Western Slope water managers uneasy. 

According to the terms of ShOP, when it is on during the summer, the plant can call 1,250 cfs. In the wintertime, that number falls to 900 cfs. The agreement is in place for 40 years (with 32 remaining), a relatively short period in water planning, after which it could be renegotiated. And ShOP doesn’t have the stronger, more permanent backing of a water court decree. 

“ShOP came about as a band aid to kind of maintain the river flow and the river regime when the plant was out,” said Brendon Langenhuizen, River District director of technical advocacy. “ShOP wasn’t meant to be for year after year after year of the plant being down.”

The River District’s campaign to acquire the Shoshone water rights has been gaining momentum over the last year, with about $55 million in committed funding so far from entities across the Western Slope, the River District and the state of Colorado. The River District plans to apply for $40 million in funding from the U.S. Bureau Reclamation’s B2E funding. This money from the Inflation Reduction Act is earmarked for environmental drought mitigation.

The River District’s plan is to add an instream flow use to the water rights in addition to their current use for hydropower. That requires working with the Colorado Water Conservation Board, which is the only entity in the state allowed to hold instream flow rights which preserve the environment, as well as getting a new water court decree to allow the change in use.

That way, when the Shoshone plant is offline, the instream flow right would be activated to continue pulling water downstream, making ShOP obsolete and solidifying a critical water right for the Western Slope. 

Xcel would lease the water right for hydropower from the River District for as long as the plant is in operation. 

“Colorado’s Western Slope is truly at an epicenter of increased temperatures and decreased streamflows that are exacerbating temperature issues, creating water quality issues,” Moyer said. “So it’s imperative that we look for these legacy level, permanent solutions to build resiliency in our basin.” 

This story is provided by Aspen Journalism, a nonprofit, investigative news organization covering water, environment, social justice, and more. Visit aspenjournalism.org.