Will 2026 be the year that a national conservation area is created on the lower Dolores River? Proponents of the long-stalled effort are hoping it will.
On Dec. 17, the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources unanimously passed legislation that would create the NCA on about 68,000 acres in Montezuma, Dolores, and San Miguel counties. However, the bill, which was introduced by Colorado senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, now will have to be approved by the full Senate. It has not even been introduced in the House yet.
The effort to create the NCA has been going on for more than a decade and a half. It is supported by a wide variety of stakeholders, including commissioners from the three counties involved, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, the municipalities of Cortez, Dolores, Dove Creek, and Norwood, and a number of outdoor-recreation and conservation advocacy groups.
“The Tribe is intent on protecting our Dolores Project allocations,” said Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Chairman Selwyn Whiteskunk in a press release.
“We believe the proposed NCA legislation supports this goal by legislatively addressing the potentially conflicting authorities of Reclamation over the Dolores Project contracts and the jurisdiction of the Forest Service and BLM below McPhee Reservoir. This legislation also protects Tribal cultural rights and practices within the NCA and provides for a Ute Mountain Ute representative on the Resource Advisory Council that will be involved in developing a Resource Management Plan for the NCA.”
“I have worked continuously on this proposal since 2008,” said Al Heaton, a local rancher who has operations in the proposed NCA, in the press release.
“I believe local participation in the management of the area will provide better benefits for the native fish, scenic area, recreation, permitted federal land uses, private land values and water rights than a wild and scenic designation. I have ranching and farming operations in all three counties involved. I appreciate Senator Bennet for his many years of his leadership on this bill and Senator Hickenlooper for joining him in supporting this bill. I hope this bill can go forward in the bipartisan way we have shown is possible with the diverse local groups that put this proposal together.”
But the NCA also has opponents.
On Tuesday, Allen Maez of Lewis told the Montezuma County commissioners he and others have concerns about who would manage the area.
“I think the biggest concern is who is going to be the controlling committee when that NCA is passed,” Maez said. “That committee won’t be picked immediately but it will be folks who may not have the best interests of Montezuma County.”
Commissioner Gerald Koppenhafer, who served on a diverse working group that was formed in 2008 and recommended the NCA after years of study, disagreed.
He pointed out that in 1976, the river was found suitable for designation under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, which required by law that the river then be managed so as to maintain its character and Outstandingly Remarkable Values.
“All those restrictions have been on this river for all these years and there’s no way to get that designation off other than to legislate it off,” Koppenhafer said.
He said the proposed NCA represents a compromise with environmental groups and that it would be far preferable than simply leaving things alone.
The legislation, if passed, would remove the potential Wild and Scenic Rivers designation, which carries with it an automatic federal reserved water right, Koppenhafer said.
The working group that proposed the NCA was also concerned that, if it was not created through legislation, a future president could at some point declare a national monument along the river corridor.
“You have absolutely no say in how a monument would be managed locally,” Koppenhafer said.
The NCA would not take in any private property, he noted. “And it doesn’t come with any federal reserved water right.”
Commissioner Jim Candelaria concurred, saying compromises are sometimes necessary.
“Everything we do up here is not about jumping up and down like 800-pound gorillas wanting to get our way,” Candelaria said. “Having an NCA does give us local control.”
He said that Canyons of the Ancients National Monument was designated because locals couldn’t agree on an NCA.
Commissioner Kent Lindsay agreed.
“In the late ’90s and early 2000s, this community fought and squabbled over the Canyons of the Ancients designation,” Lindsay said. “An NCA was proposed but they didn’t want that. The next thing you know, we’re looking at that national monument sitting there.”
He said this is an opportunity “not to repeat history.”
At some point, there will be a change in administration, Lindsay said, and a national monument could be proclaimed.
“We will have a Dolores River monument that will corral a ton of acres and a lot of our water, and we can’t live without the water here,” Lindsay said. “We’re short all the time anyway.”
In a recent editorial, the Durango Herald called for U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd to introduce the NCA legislation in the House, something that his predecessor, Rep. Lauren Boebert, did do back in 2022 and 2023. Those legislative efforts did not make it through Congress, however.
Koppenhafer and La Plata County Commissioner Marsha Porter-Norton also wrote a recent opinion piece in the Herald and Cortez Journal urging Hurd to introduce the legislation.
