U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd took to the House floor Thursday, urging fellow Republicans to vote to override President Donald Trump’s veto of H.R. 131 – a bill to complete the Arkansas Valley Conduit project and bring clean drinking water to southeast Colorado.
The override effort failed, with 177 House Republicans voting in line with the president, blocking the two-thirds majority needed to override the veto.
“I am disappointed Congress did not vote to override the president’s veto,” Hurd said in a statement to The Durango Herald. “I worked my hardest to get as much support from members, and I will continue to work hard to fund this project and deliver clean water for rural Colorado.”
According to a Thursday news release from Hurd’s office, the Arkansas Valley Conduit project was first authorized by Congress in 1962. In his first term, Trump celebrated the project, and former Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt broke ground on the project in October 2020.
The project was promised to bring clean water to some 50,000 residents of southeast Colorado who currently rely on “contaminated and radioactive groundwater for drinking,” according to Hurd’s release. Eighteen water systems in the region are currently under enforcement orders for violating Environmental Protection Administration standards.
“Sixty-four years later, that promise remains unfinished,” Hurd said in the release. “When we talk about honoring federal commitments, we are talking about whether the people who grow our food can count on clean water. These are real families in real towns facing real public health consequences.”
The freshman congressman, along with Rep. Lauren Boebert, sponsored the bill, which passed both the House and the Senate with bipartisan support in 2025. In 2009, President Barack Obama’s Omnibus Public Land Management Act reduced the amount communities that would rely on the Arkansas Valley Conduit project needed to repay to 35% of the total cost, with the rest being covered by the federal government.
“H.R. 131 does not expand the project, authorize new construction or increase the federal share,” the release said. “The legislation simply provides rural communities more time and flexibility to repay the federal government.”
The bill would increase the repayment period and cut the interest rate in half, lessening the financial burden on Colorado communities while finally providing them clean, safe drinking water.
However, on Dec. 29, Trump reversed his support and vetoed the project, stating the bill “would continue the failed policies of the past” by forcing Federal taxpayers to pay for a local water project.
Nick Bayer, Hurd’s chief of staff, said in an interview before the House vote that the president’s decision to veto a bill – particularly a bipartisan one that would deliver clean drinking water to Coloradans who need it – was a non-partisan issue.
Water is a particularly hot topic in the West, evident in how the bill passed both chambers of Congress with bipartisan support. What the veto signified, Bayer said, is that a presidential administration in Washington can decide what is best for water projects across the West, regardless of what those communities say they need.
“If this is what’s at stake – that we’re making short-sighted decisions – anybody’s district is now on the chopping block, anybody’s water project is now on the chopping block,” Bayer said. “Water is so interconnected, right, that a water project in our district has ramifications all across the country, all across the West.”
In the release, Hurd said the decision to veto the project would signal Congress and the president turning their backs on the very people who voted them into office.
“Rural Colorado – and rural America more broadly – voted overwhelmingly for this President, and for an agenda that promised they would not be forgotten,” Hurd said in his statement. “They voted with the expectation that Washington would keep its commitments to rural America – not abandon them midway. If the project was worth supporting in a campaign rally and celebrating at a groundbreaking, surely it is worth finishing.”
sedmondson@durangoherald.com
