Price Mayor Michael Kourianos drew an imaginary line in the air between two scrubby desert hills.
His hand traced the path of a planned 100-foot dam for a new reservoir just north of the city in Carbon County. The project, which Kourianos described as vital to the area’s future, would provide irrigation to farmers and shore up the city’s water supply.
It’s a big deal in a drought-prone area, and it could be built within five years, he said — if the federal funding that’s supposed to pay for it doesn’t disappear.
“I'm very much worried about that,” Kourianos said. “That could be at risk. That’s the unknown.”
To finish the project’s environmental impact study by next spring, he said the city and county had to scrape together about $215,000. That was after they were told there were no more federal funds to help with it due to the Trump administration’s recent cuts.
The next step will be designing the reservoir, which he said is supposed to be paid for by the Natural Resources Conservation Service, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The agency is set to pay 75% of construction costs, too.
In all, the project will cost around $200 million. For a city of 8,216 people, that’s just not in the budget.
“The Wasatch Front is booming, but we don't have the money in rural,” Kourianos said. “We need the state, we need the federal [money] to help us become sustainable.”
Across Utah’s Colorado River Basin, projects to protect water supplies and restore river ecosystems are in a holding pattern because the federal funding many expected may not be coming.
Price’s reservoir isn’t the only one threatened.
In January, for example, the Biden administration awarded more than $70 million to 10 proposals in Utah and another $50 million to four on the Navajo Nation and Ute tribal land within the state’s watersheds. The projects range from improving wetland habitat for endangered fish to removing invasive plants, such as Russian olive trees, from riverbanks.
It was part of a $388.3 million effort to improve drought resilience across the Colorado River Basin with money from the Inflation Reduction Act.
Just a few days after the money was awarded, however, President Donald Trump took office and paused it. Several months later, recipients are still waiting.
“How IRA funding is or is not being distributed is a national challenge,” said Cody Stewart, director of strategic engagement with the Colorado River Authority of Utah. “There's really not any certainty at all.”
The river authority has been involved in several projects that were allocated money, only to have it pulled back with the change in administration, he said. And, he added, “there's really not any sort of definitive plan if or when they're going to distribute it.”
One of the impacted proposals is a collaboration between the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources and conservation organizations Trout Unlimited and The Nature Conservancy that would pay people to voluntarily leave water in the Price River rather than use it.
“While the funds were awarded earlier this year, they have not been dispersed yet,” said Ellie Oakley, The Nature Conservancy’s Colorado River project manager.
Her team is still committed to the project and hopes it can be a model that scales to help other watersheds across the West, she said. They are exploring other funding options.
The proposal estimates it would increase Price River streamflows by 1,000 acre-feet per year for three years. One acre-foot is enough water to cover an acre of ground a foot deep in water and is roughly enough to supply two households for one year.
That could make a big difference, as overuse and climate change have strained the desert river’s already limited water supply.
“Over the past 20 years, there's been declining flows,” Oakley said. “We've seen the number of low-flow days on the river increase quite substantially.”
Some of the water they hope to conserve could be stored at the site of another project that’s had its federal funding held, the planned Olsen Reservoir in southern Carbon County.
The saved water could then be released to prevent the Price River from going dry in the summer, which could keep native fish from getting stranded and dying. It would also connect precious desert river habitat, said Kyler Stilson, native aquatics biologist with Utah Division of Wildlife Resources.
“From this point down, there's 80 miles of river that we're able to open up and let fish have access to, from the confluence of the Green River all the way up to here,” Stilson said from a ridge that would become the reservoir’s bank.
The proposed reservoir would also benefit waterfowl, he said, because birds could use the marshland it creates as a place to rest and nest in a region where there’s little surface water. Eventually, the state may even be able to use Olsen Reservoir to reintroduce a native fish, the roundtail chub, that’s been absent from this area for around 40 years, Stilson said.
Without the federal money, however, the project faces an uncertain future.
Many may not realize how federal funding cuts trickle down and negatively impact their own communities, Price Mayor Kourianos said.
“People are saying, ‘Great, we're saving money.’ Are you really? Are you hurting your community,” he asked. “You got to look at that bigger picture.”
So part of his job is to educate both residents and lawmakers to make that connection. And he’s still optimistic it can be done before it’s too late.
Disclosure: The Nature Conservancy is a financial sponsor of KUER.
