WASHINGTON – Colorado Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper have reintroduced a bill to establish a national conservation area (NCA) and special management area (SMA) along 70 miles of the Dolores River, but like the other handful of public lands bills they have introduced this session, the Dolores bill faces an uphill battle.
Covering 68,000 acres, the new designations follow the river from the northern border of San Miguel County through Dolores County and into the northern part of Montezuma County.
Both the NCA and SMA broadly respect existing private property rights, water rights and contracts with the Dolores Project, but prevent future mineral leasing and new major water developments like dams. The bill also permanently withdraws areas within the NCA from study for a future Wild and Scenic Designation – which would include a federal water right and potentially stricter restrictions on use – but requires that the NCA management plan provide for continued conservation efforts.
“Southwestern Coloradans care deeply about the Dolores River,” Hickenlooper said in a news release. “Leaders on the ground have spent years deciding how to best protect and invest in the Dolores. We worked with them side by side to design a bipartisan bill to preserve this landscape.”
The bill is entirely separate from the proposed national monument in Mesa and Montrose counties to the north. That proposal, which would have required presidential action, was far more controversial as residents worried it would cause tourism to spike and impede their way of life.
The Bureau of Land Management would administer the NCA, while the U.S. Forest Service would administer the SMA.
According to Amber Clark, executive director of the Dolores River Boating Advocates, the proposed legislation is a compromise between almost 50 different stakeholders who have been discussing management of the Dolores River corridor since 2008.
“This bill was written in Colorado, by Coloradans who live, work, and depend on the Dolores River,” Bennet said in the news release. “It represents a balanced, sensible way forward to resolve many long-standing disagreements, protect the river for all parties, and provide long-term certainty for generations.”
Clark said the bill continues to protect the Dolores in many similar ways that the Wild and Scenic Act would, which is why many participants were willing to compromise.
“It’s essentially created a designation that gives all the folks at the table a level of certainty around how it’s going to be managed moving forward,” she said.
The bill also enjoys support from the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Montezuma County, Dolores County, San Miguel County and over a dozen conservation groups and local businesses in the area, according to the senators’ release. La Plata County and Archuleta County, both outside the boundaries, also support the legislation.
Though Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert, who now represents Colorado’s 4th district, supported the bill during her tenure as CD3’s congresswoman, the district’s current congressman, Rep. Jeff Hurd, R-Grand Junction, has not voiced support for the bill nor introduced companion legislation in the House. His office did not respond to questions about his position on the bill.
The senators’ previous version of the bill from 2022 – identical to the current version – passed out of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in December 2023, but never passed the Senate floor. As a result, the bill died at the end of 2024, when the 118th Congress finished.
This time around, the bill must clear the same committee, which is now chaired by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah. With Lee, a constant critic of public lands, at the committee’s helm, the bill is facing an uphill battle.
Richa Sharma and Kathryn Squyres are interns for The Durango Herald and The Journal in Cortez and students at American University in Washington, D.C. They can be reached at rsharma@durangoherald.com and ksquyres@durangoherald.com.
