What a loss of federal funding could mean for Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources

Following the Trump administration’s January order to freeze federal funding — and the decision two days later to rescind it — public officials have continued to raise alarms about what the loss of these dollars could mean for communities.  

For Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources, the freeze cast uncertainty on the over 350 grants that support $300 million worth of programs and 490 staff members that are funded by federal dollars, according to the agency’s Executive Director Dan Gibbs.

Gibbs testified last week at an oversight hearing for the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands. While he touched on the importance of public lands in Colorado, he also addressed how a funding freeze could impact the department’s work on issues involving land, water, wildlife, minerals, and energy. 

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“​​The funding that Colorado receives from the federal government is imperative to accomplish projects that cover everything from flood mitigation to dam and mine safety — typically in rural communities,” Gibbs said. “Recent efforts to freeze federal funds are creating significant uncertainty, and concern among our constituents and are already negatively impacting these types of projects.” 

The freeze was initiated as part of the Trump administration’s broad review of government spending and orders shifting policy around diversity, equity and inclusion programs, public lands, energy and more. While the freeze was rescinded on Jan. 30 and a federal court ordered the White House to temporarily lift it on Feb.3, Colorado officials reported that $570 million in federal funding remained withheld from the state on Feb. 10. 

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“​​It’s created uncertainty and huge challenges and confusion, to say the least,” Gibbs said of the federal funding freeze at the hearing. “We’re really monitoring this closely because it’s (changing) day by day.”

Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources includes the following: 

• Colorado Parks and Wildlife
• The Colorado Water Conservation Board
• The Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety
• The Divison of Water Resources
• The Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission
• The State Board of Land Commissioners 
• The Divison of Forestry
• The Colorado Avalanche Information Center 

During his comments, Gibbs referred to federal funding as “the bedrock” of the department’s programs. 

Specifically, Gibbs raised concerns about the Water Conservation Board’s wildfire watersheds program that assesses community wildfire threats, wildlife operations including the state’s efforts to control aquatic nuisance species, its floodplain mapping unit, an orphan well program, its abandoned mine program, critical dam projects and more. 

The inability to conduct much of this work could have immense impacts on communities as well as the life and safety of Coloradans, Gibbs noted. 

In addition to his role at the state department, Gibbs is a certified wildland firefighter living in Summit County. At the hearing, Gibbs said a freeze could have “devastating impacts on wildfire issues,” including the ability to protect life, property and critical infrastructure. 

Wildfire mitigation and management requires an “all-lands approach” involving all the state, federal, private and tribal stakeholders that could be impacted by large-scale fire events, Gibbs said. He added that these groups need to prioritize, plan and work together to take advantage of shared federal-state resources to mitigate and fight wildfires. 

“I stay up at night thinking about not if but when we have our next megafire and thinking about all the different partners that are involved with fighting that fire and so forth,” Gibbs said. “And whether it’s the (Bureau of Land Management) or the U.S. Forest Service, they’re my brothers and sisters as we work to problem-solve this. And so it is scary to think about what potential impacts we could have.”

Last week, the Trump administration’s federal workforce cuts hit the U.S. Forest Service, raising concerns from Colorado electeds on how this could impact wildfire protections among other things. Gov. Jared Polis shared that at least 90 Colorado employees were fired on Friday, Feb. 14. 

In his statement, Polis warned that the loss of employees working on road maintenance, forest management and watershed restoration could tip “the scale toward more fire danger.”  

The reductions reportedly hit recreation and timber positions the hardest. 

Last week, Gibbs said that without the resources or staff capacity to “get out there to do fire mitigation work, to put together fire breaks, to work with our local communities to make sure we’re doing work at the right pace, right location, right scale could have dramatic impacts, not only on people in my community…but could have devastating impacts on the 40 million people that depend on Colorado River water, for example.”

Gibbs emphasized the significance of federal partnerships not only for wildfires but for many of the public land issues the department addresses. 

“The relationship we have with our federal partners — whether it’s dealing with remediation of orphan wells or old abandoned mines, water quality and quantity —  these are life and death issues for people and it’s not just something that should be wrapped up into politics at all,” Gibbs said.