In January, the Biden Administration included $40 million through the Inflation Reduction Act to go toward the Colorado River District’s efforts to acquire the nearly $100 million Shoshone Water Rights from Xcel. However, Hurd said during a recent phone town hall that he believed the Trump administration had frozen the grant.

The Grand Junction Republican representing Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District in the U.S. House penned a letter to Interior Department Secretary Doug Burgum on March 18 urging the department to fully fund the Bureau of Reclamation’s $40 million award.

“For more than a century, the senior water rights associated with the Shoshone Hydropower Plant in Glenwood Canyon have played a pivotal role in sustaining reliable flows in the Upper Colorado River,” Hurd wrote. “These flows are essential to the health and vitality of our region, enabling everything from high-value crop production and oil and gas production to recreational tourism and rural municipal water supplies.”

Hurd wrote about the project’s economic benefits, citing BBC Research and Consulting data that concluded that preserving Shoshone’s flows would provide a net present value of as much as $609 million.