December 4, 2025
DENVER — In the face of growing federal threats to clean water and the potential loss of protections to over 250,000 acres of Colorado wetlands and streams, the Colorado Water Quality Control Commission (WQCC) will begin a rulemaking next week that will decide the fate of these vitally important areas.
Colorado’s rulemaking is now even more important in the wake of a proposed rule released by the Environmental Protection Agency in November that could leave as much as 97% of the state’s wetlands and 68% of Colorado’s stream miles subject to unregulated development.
A coalition of 26 organizations, working on freshwater conservation and representing more than 200,000 Coloradans, collaborated with the Colorado General Assembly in 2024 to enact strong bipartisan protections for Colorado waters and wetlands after a significant 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision weakened decades of federal clean water protections. This was the most substantial erosion of provisions of the Clean Water Act since it was enacted in 1972.
The bipartisan legislation mandated that the WQCC write rules to create a permitting system that will govern if, when and how wetlands and other waterways in Colorado can be developed.
The coalition is urging the WQCC to remain faithful to the legislation and to:
- Fully carry out the bipartisan law
- Protect the full scope of all the state’s waters that we all depend on
- Provide comprehensive water protections without broadening exemptions or exclusions from what was agreed upon in the legislation
- Allow the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to consider the definition of public interest broadly so it includes economic, health, recreation and cultural issues related to Colorado’s water protections
- Ensure enforceable, science-based protections for Colorado’s wetlands and streams and the wildlife that rely on them
- Keep Colorado a leader in water stewardship for generations to come
The WQCC’s rulemaking session is scheduled for Dec. 8-10 at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. The public can also attend via Zoom.
Coalition members:
- Audubon of the Rockies
- American Rivers
- Blue River Watershed Group
- Boulder Watershed Collective
- Clean Water Action
- Clean Water for All
- Coalition for the Poudre River Watershed
- Coalition for the Upper South Platte
- Colorado Trout Unlimited
- Colorado Wildlife Federation
- Conservation Colorado
- Eagle River Coalition
- EarthJustice
- Friends of the Yampa
- Great Old Broads for Wilderness
- GreenLatinos
- High Country Conservation Advocates
- Sierra Club
- Natural Resource Defense Council
- The Pew Charitable Trusts
- Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership
- San Juan Citizens Alliance
- Uncompahgre Watershed Partnership,
- Roaring Fork Conservancy
- Western Slope Conservation Center
- Western Resource Advocates
