Climate Fix Blog

If you find yourself at Boulder Reservoir on a bright summer morning, you’re likely to catch Orla Bannan taking strong, steady strokes across the water as she trains for her next triathlon. Orla’s life is suffused with water. She spends her working days advocating to protect the streams and rivers we depend on and in her free time she enjoys the peaceful swooshing sounds of water flowing past her.

Ideally, she’d prefer this water to be clean, cool, and plentiful — a reality that’s becoming harder to find in our increasingly arid Western landscape. 

Orla’s journey to the base of the Flatirons has spanned across several bodies of water — both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans — and countries. She spent her formative years in Ireland, outside of Dublin along the dunes and grassy knolls of its beaches and in Killarney to the southwest with its lush, rolling peaks dotted with lakes. Her first connection with nature began in the hills behind her house hearing mythical stories of fairies, exploring the Norman stone tower from the 1200s, building boats made from leaves in small streams, and eating food grown by her father in the fertile soil.  

“I was spoiled as a child, my dad was an avid gardener,” Orla recounted. “We lived outside of town on about an acre with a greenhouse, rows fruit trees, and every type of produce you could imagine, from raspberries to potatoes and asparagus.”  

Her early connections to the natural world involved the Irish flora and fauna, but it was solidified through her introduction to horse riding —

a passion that would overtake the rest of her school years. Being outside was synonymous with riding a horse to Orla during her youth, and she’d spend hours cleaning saddles and hauling muck out of the stables. Her family moved to Sydney when she was 12, and the transition from Ireland’s lush hills and cool weather to Australia’s heat and dry landscapes was jarring, but the sharpness was softened when she got her own pony.  

“My best friend and I rode our horses together, and we were absolutely obsessed,” Orla laughed. “We’d leave school the moment the bell went off to go to the stables and ride until dark on every trail we could find. One summer, we took our horses on holiday to the beach and swam in the ocean with them.”  

When it was time to go to college, she stayed in Australia and majored in psychology at the University of Sydney before entering law school where she became passionate about human rights. Her strong sense of fairness and justice led Orla to become interested in policy and people’s abilities to access clean water and outdoor recreational spaces. While working as a practicing lawyer, she spent a significant amount of time adventuring in the outdoors, both in the air and on the ground, that piqued her interest in policies around water access.  

“I started rock climbing in Australia and really loved it,” Orla shared. “Early on, I remember running into issues around water access while climbing, and I was both confused and interested in the policy issues around it.”  

It was during this time that Orla crossed another ocean and threshold — moving to the United States in 1999 to be with her now husband.  After a year in Arizona and several years in the high-powered world of New York City law firms, Orla and her husband moved to Avon, Colorado, in 2008 to serve as in-house counsel on real estate for Vail Resorts.

In the mountains, Orla fell in love with snowboarding and found her passion for environmental issues expanding.  

“We were very focused on sustainability and environmental protection when I was at Vail Resorts,” Orla recounted. “We wanted to make sure we weren’t polluting the land and water we operated on. I really focused on how to increase sustainability across the company.” 

After becoming lead counsel for Vail’s Mountain Division, Orla received her LEED certification, a demanding program focused on environmental design, sustainability, and resource management. She began focusing on energy efficiency, renewable energy, companywide emissions reductions, and water rights issues for the company.  

“During the late 2000s and early 2010s, climate change was becoming a larger issue and priority for the ski industry,” Orla shared. “We had to start thinking about how we could make everything more sustainable, especially when it came to managing water supplies and growth.”  

After leaving Vail Resorts in 2016, Orla’s experience with water rights and her interest in conserving water led her to Western Resource Advocates where she now works as the policy manager for state policy and engagement on the Healthy Rivers team. In her role, she focuses on developing and implementing water conservation strategies at the state and local level and builds relationships with many decision makers to educate them about the economic and environmental benefits of water conservation, stream protection, and funding for conservation. 

We have a historic opportunity to put in place a forward-thinking plan to protect the Colorado River and the people, fish, and wildlife that rely on it for generations to come, but this relies on the collaboration of the seven Colorado River Basin states.  

“It’s critical that we think about how these guidelines can benefit the river itself,” Orla shared. “With these agreements, there are ways that you can do it and simply comply. Or we can make these agreements in a more creative way that can have a multitude of benefits.”  

In the West, we must use every drop of water in a smart, sustainable, and creative way. By thinking about how to adapt to a drier future, how to adapt our agricultural methods to support farmers, and how to continue to protect streams and fish, Orla believes that we can create policies that benefit all Colorado River users.  

For Orla, water quality and protection also play an important role in connecting people with water and nature.  

“I’ve swam in rivers before where I’ve been shaking garbage off my arms, and I don’t want that here,” Orla said. “A lot of people find connection with nature by being near or in rivers, and we want to make sure those areas are protected, clean, and accessible for people across the West to appreciate.”  

When the work gets hard, like 2024 when the Supreme Court rolled back Clean Water Act protections through the EPA v. Sackett decision, Orla remembers how far we’ve come, especially when it comes to water and the progress we’ve made. For example, when the Sackett decision came down, Orla and WRA got to work in Colorado restoring protections to streams and wetlands affected. And then, in 2025, we restored the same protections in New Mexico, emphasizing the critical role that state level advocacy plays in protecting our rivers.  

She thinks about the rivers that have more water in them now instead of running dry, the streams where fish and wildlife are thriving thanks to reintroduction programs, the beautiful places that we have stopped from being restricted by dams, and the over 2,000 river miles that WRA helped protect through the Outstanding Waters designation.  

What also gives Orla hope is the many other experts across the nation working on water issues.  

“We’re all in this together. While there may be a lot of triages happening right now with environmental protections, I feel better knowing that there are many different people working on these issues.”  

For her part, Orla is doubling down on work at the state level, where we can be nimble and impactful. By bringing together water utilities, farmers, municipalities, and other users, she is building united and imaginative programs that will protect Colorado’s water. And when she needs to take a break, she drives just up the road to Boulder Reservoir, secures her goggles and wetsuit, and slides into the water she enjoys and helps protect.  

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