Our Expert Staff

WRA’s team of experts has three decades of working where decisions are made, sweating the details, creating evidence-based solutions, and holding decision makers accountable.

Bart Miller

Healthy Rivers Director

Department

Healthy Rivers, Senior Leadership

Office Location

Boulder, Colorado

Area of Focus

As the healthy rivers director at WRA, Bart is leading a multi-state team to emphasize preserving healthy ecosystems and ensuring recreation values while improving the efficiency of meeting the needs of farms, industry, and communities in the seven Western states the organization serves.

With climate change the biggest threat to maintaining and creating healthy rivers and streams, Bart manages experts in each respective state to enact policy and build coalitions around: recovering endangered species; preserving water rights for rivers; creating long-lasting opportunities for boaters and anglers; and more.

Background

Before joining WRA in 2000, Bart spent four years in the Solicitor’s Office in Washington, D.C., on the legal staff that advises the many agencies within the U.S. Department of the Interior, where he focused on natural resource issues in the Division of Indian Affairs.

Accomplishments

During his time at WRA, Bart has been instrumental in enacting creative solutions to deeply complex challenges. Among them, he helped legalize the use of rain barrels to harvest rainwater, design water pricing to incentivize conservation, and direct millions of dollars toward more environmental and recreational water projects.

Bart also led a coalition of groups that helped to shape Colorado’s first water plan, which was finalized in 2015. One of his favorite work memories includes securing flows for Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. Years ago, the Park lacked its own water rights, leaving it and its watersheds in the “shallow end,” particularly during dry years. Thanks in large part to his leadership, the park now boasts its own water rights. It’s now ensured that the ecosystem in the park and the Gunnison River below has the water flow it needs, for both healthy habitats and recreational opportunities, in perpetuity.

Education

  • Bachelor of Arts from Dartmouth College
  • Juris Doctor from the University of Colorado School of Law

Favorite thing about the West

Backcountry skiing after a fresh dump of snow; floating on rivers before they’re even watery.

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