Is Your Town on Colorado's 2026 Water Infrastructure Funding Master List?

The Bottom Line

Every year, Colorado updates its official "eligibility lists" for local water and wastewater projects to receive low-interest state funding. This resolution adds dozens of new towns, metro districts, and HOAs to the list, meaning they can finally start repairing aging treatment plants, installing new meters, or securing new water rights. If you live in one of these communities—or own a construction firm that builds this stuff—this is the blueprint for the next wave of major local infrastructure spending.

What This Bill Actually Does

Let's talk about how water infrastructure actually gets built in Colorado. You don't just dig a trench and send the state a bill. Local governments rely on two massive, state-run financial engines: the Drinking Water Revolving Fund (DWRF) and the Water Pollution Control Revolving Fund (WPCRF). These funds act like highly subsidized public banks, offering below-market loans to help communities build, fix, or upgrade their water systems. But here's the catch—to get a dime from these funds, your specific project has to be officially written into state law on an eligibility list.

Senate Joint Resolution 26-001 is the legislature's annual stamp of approval for these lists. It outlines exactly who is being added, who is modifying their project scope, and who is being removed because their work is done. On the drinking water side, the bill adds entities ranging from the Tree Haus Metropolitan District to the Yampa Valley Housing Authority, allowing them to fund new treatment plants, distribution lines, and water meters. It also greenlights wastewater additions for towns like Hartman and LaSalle to build out interceptor pipelines and manage biosolids.

Just as importantly, the resolution modifies dozens of existing projects. As local engineering plans evolve, towns often realize they need to tackle new problems. For example, the bill allows the City of Thornton and Pueblo West to add "water rights" to their funding eligibility, while towns like Crested Butte and San Juan River Village are adding "source water protection." The bill is essentially a master ledger of Colorado's most pressing plumbing problems, legally authorizing the state to help pay to fix them.

What It Means for You

If you are a homeowner or renter in Colorado, you probably don't think about your local water district until the tap runs brown or your monthly utility bill spikes. This resolution is all about preventing both of those headaches. When your town needs a $10 million upgrade to an aging wastewater treatment plant, they have to borrow that money. If they borrow it on the open commercial market, the high interest rates are passed directly onto you through massive rate hikes. By getting on these state revolving fund lists, your local district secures incredibly low-interest financing, which keeps your monthly water and sewer bills manageable.

Take a close look at the specific communities listed in this bill—it impacts hundreds of thousands of Coloradans across both rural and urban divides. If you live in a smaller, rural network like the Lost Valley of the San Juans Property Owners Association or the Ginters Grove Public Improvement District in Delta County, this funding is a lifeline to replace failing, decades-old pipes. The bill also heavily features consolidation projects for places like Idledale, Silverthorne, and Sedalia. In plain English, consolidation means a struggling, underfunded water system is merging with a larger, more stable one to ensure you actually have reliable, safe drinking water for the long haul.

We are also seeing a major shift toward modern water realities. Several communities, including the City of Evans and the Town of Dove Creek, have modified their projects to include green infrastructure. This means they aren't just laying concrete pipes anymore; they are getting funding for sustainable drainage, wetlands restoration, and permeable surfaces that manage stormwater naturally. Whether it's upgrading the supply for a local school district (Weld County School District RE-10J) or installing modern water meters in Frisco, this bill represents the hidden mechanics of how your community stays livable.

What It Means for Your Business

If you are in the civil construction, engineering, or environmental consulting space, you need to treat this resolution like a state-verified lead generation sheet. The communities added and modified on these lists are gearing up to spend millions on capital improvement projects. We aren't just talking about basic trenching. The bill explicitly authorizes funding for highly specialized work:

• Biosolids management: Boulder County, Granada, and Dove Creek.
• Interceptor pipeline construction: Hillrose, Haxtun, and LaSalle.
• Nonpoint source pollution control: Fruita, Greeley, and Green Mountain Falls.

If your firm specializes in these areas, the local governments listed in this bill are your next prospective clients. They are currently—or will very soon be—putting these newly authorized projects out for bid. Furthermore, the inclusion of green infrastructure and source water protection for districts like the Roxborough Water and Sanitation District opens the door for landscape architects, environmental scientists, and sustainable design firms to secure lucrative municipal contracts that used to be strictly reserved for traditional concrete-and-steel engineering outfits.

Beyond direct construction contracts, this bill matters immensely for real estate developers and commercial builders. In Colorado, you cannot pull building permits for a new subdivision or a commercial complex if the local municipality doesn't have the water supply or wastewater capacity to handle it. Communities like the Oak Meadows Service Company in Garfield County and the Two Rivers Metropolitan District are using these funds to expand their treatment plants and storage. Once those infrastructure bottlenecks are cleared, it unlocks the ability for developers to actually break ground on new housing and commercial spaces in those regions.

Follow the Money

The beauty of the Colorado Water Resources and Power Development Authority and its revolving funds is how they operate largely outside the state's general tax pool. This resolution does not require a massive new appropriation of your state income tax dollars. Instead, these funds are capitalized by a combination of federal grants from the EPA, state matching dollars, and the authority's ability to issue revenue bonds.

Because it is a "revolving" fund, the mechanics are self-sustaining: as older projects (like the newly completed Town of Kiowa project removed by this bill) pay back their low-interest loans, that principal and interest flow right back into the pot to fund the next generation of projects. For local taxpayers, this is the most fiscally efficient way to upgrade critical infrastructure. It leverages federal dollars and state bonding capacity to save local municipalities—and by extension, local ratepayers—millions of dollars in financing costs over the 20- to 30-year lifespan of a public works loan.

Where This Bill Stands

SJR26-001 is currently In Committee. The latest official action came on 02/17/2026: Introduced In House - Assigned to Agriculture, Water & Natural Resources.

That means the bill is still in the committee stage, and it is currently sitting in the Agriculture & Natural Resources, Agriculture, Water & Natural Resources. To keep moving, it would need to clear committee and then survive floor votes in both chambers.