DENVER — President Donald Trump has vetoed a bill that backers claim would provide reliable, clean drinking water to rural communities in southeastern Colorado.
The "Finish the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act" aimed to help complete a 130-mile pipeline that will bring filtered water ready for treatment from the Pueblo Reservoir to 39 Colorado communities.
This is the president's first veto of his second term in the Oval Office. He rejected the bill that garnered bipartisan support and cleared both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, saying his "Administration is committed to preventing American taxpayers from funding expensive and unreliable policies."
The Arkansas Valley Conduit was first approved back in 1962 as part of the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project, but according to the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District, it was not built for decades because local users were unable to repay construction costs.
In 2009, Congress amended the plan for the pipeline to be funded 65% from federal dollars and 35% from local dollars.
The local costs are to be repaid to the federal government over 50 years after the pipeline's completion.
The bill aimed to change that timeline to 75 years while also reducing the interest rates on the payments, according to the federal lobbyist for the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District, Christine Arbogast.
“We sought this bill in order to make the payments more affordable for the participants. So, it's very simple. It's a longer period of time to pay their 35% and it's a reduced interest rate from what the normal Bureau of Reclamation interest rate is. So, that's in a nutshell where we are," Arbogast explained. “What happens is the cost to repay the 35% [of the pipeline] is an incredible burden on the poorest part of the state and three of the poorest counties in the state."
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The water in the Arkansas Valley faces state compliance issues due to naturally occurring salinity or radionuclide contamination. Many consumers rely on groundwater, and a new source of fresh water is needed.
“This isn't a frivolous project. This is in response to a mandate and to the need for people in rural areas, as well as urban areas, to be able to drink water that is safe and is not carcinogenic," explained Arbogast. "I've worked on a lot of projects in my career since 1985 — many of them far more controversial than this. And this project doesn't have opponents."
The veto does not halt construction of the pipeline, Arbogast said, but does "increase substantially the burden on those counties to participate as a partner and pay their 35%."
Arbogast said the pipeline would provide places like Pueblo, Crowley, Otero, Bent, and Prowers Counties with drinking water — all counties that voted for Trump in 2024.
In a letter to Congress, Trump said changes over the years, like longer repayment periods and lower interest rates, have shifted the cost to federal taxpayers. The president claimed it's added more than $249 million to what's already been spent on the project, and that the total costs are now estimated at $1.3 billion.
Arbogast disagreed with that interpretation of the bill.
"Interestingly, the president's veto message says that we're behind schedule, and we have cost overruns. So first of all, we're pretty much on schedule, given the amount of appropriations that have come our way," Arbogast said. "It's not a cost overrun because somebody's not being efficient or effective, you know? It's because costs have gone up.”
The veto came as a shock to James Eklund, an attorney who specializes in water law.
“This project is a way of getting clean drinking water to people in communities that traditionally have been underserved by our infrastructure and our federal, state, and local dollars. So, it's really an important thing, not just for the people in the Arkansas River Valley, but it's also important for the entire state," Eklund said. "It's unfortunate because the bill itself — it wasn't a spending bill. It was just changing repayment terms, as the Bureau of Reclamation has done for many reclamation projects around the country, to more favorably treat the people who are repaying that money to the federal government.”
Eklund believes the people of the Arkansas Valley deserve this pipeline, and have for several decades.
"The pace that we're moving at is woefully inadequate, and that's part of the reason this conduit faces this threat, because we took so long that now we're having to deal with this veto," said Eklund. “We've got a great deal of momentum. This is a setback, nonetheless, but I think the momentum will carry us through, and the project is going to happen.”
Eklund believes the State of Colorado must begin working on solutions that are impossible to ignore, especially in the wake of Trump's veto.
"We can't put our heads in the sand. This is not a situation where we can kick the can down the road and hope that, 'Oh, it will resolve itself,' or a new president will come in and we'll get a different outcome. We have to deal with the hand we've been dealt, and that means we have to start implementing real solutions," said Eklund. “We don't have the luxury of time, and so we need to be implementing programs and policies that put water into reservoirs and essentially manage our way out of a system, out of a crisis.”
Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, a Republican who sponsored the bill, was disappointed by the veto, saying in part:
“This action blocks completion of a critical water infrastructure project that would deliver clean drinking water to 50,000 people in Southeast Colorado. This fight is not over.”
Senator John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, also weighed in and said:
“Donald Trump is playing partisan games and punishing Colorado by making rural communities suffer without clean drinking water.”
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Although the bill has been vetoed for now, both state and federal leaders say the fight to complete the project is far from over. An override vote may be an option, according to Arbogast.
"We don't have an exact game plan right now. What we have is a determination to fight this," said Arbogast.
Denver7's Political Analyst Alton Dillard said the question now is if Republicans will push back on Trump's veto.
"Are they going to be scared because they can override this veto with a two-thirds vote [in the House], but everyone seems so frightened of Donald Trump that it may not happen," Dillard said. “Especially with our congressional delegation, they really need to be the ones in the fight, but it needs to be a bipartisan fight.”
Dillard believes the veto is "pure retaliation" against the State of Colorado, and believes Congresswoman Boebert ought to lead the charge against the veto.
"I think she really showed some backbone by standing up to the Epstein files manner and not being bullied into removing her name from the discharge petition," said Dillard. “This being the first veto, which is obviously targeting the State of Colorado, it's time for Colorado to stand up and fight for their rights, and it's not even a partisan issue to me. Again, we're talking clean drinking water.”
