SAVE THE COLORADO: Elon Musk Gets the Gross Dam Fiasco Exactly Wrong

Photo: Gross Dam and Reservoir, Colorado.

Last week, Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) highlighted the 25-year battle over permitting and constructing the massive Gross Dam project in Boulder County on DOGE’s twitter account, saying:

“America once prided itself in building great projects; now, those projects are hampered by bureaucracy and overregulation. It will have taken almost 25 years to permit and construct The Gross Reservoir expansion project in Colorado, expected to be completed in 2027.”

Quixotically, DOGE’s post comes just a few weeks after a federal district judge in Denver ruled strongly against the project, arguing that from start to finish, the project violated federal law. Even stranger, the Gross Dam project has been a massive waste of tens-of-millions of federal dollars — both by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — throughout the permitting process. Further and more importantly, the project would waste over $650 million of Denver ratepayers’ money when the project is not even needed.

In fact, throughout the boondoggle’s multi-decade permitting life, even Denver Water bragged publicly about how conservation was cheap, easy, and fast — as well as very effective — in supplying new water to residents. Denver Water’s former CEO repeatedly proclaimed how effective conservation was for the agency, tweeting and posting that water use had dramatically decreased even while the population grew.

DOGE got it exactly wrong. It is Denver Water’s lethargic bureaucracy that pressed forward with this ill-fated project, wasting decades and hundreds of millions of public dollars. If anything, the project lacked government oversight and was severely under-regulated, because when it finally got to court, the judge quickly saw through Denver Water’s flimsy arguments.

In fact, over a decade ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wrote a strong comment letter to the Army Corps pointing out the violations of law which the judge cited and the Corps completely ignored. A stronger federal oversight role would’ve save hundreds of millions of wasted public dollars and killed this project years ago.

Ironically, the DOGE post came just two weeks after the lead plaintiff against the project, Save The Colorado, had been repeatedly reaching out to DOGE on twitter asking it to increase oversight of the massive waste of federal dollars on water projects across the U.S. (see the tweet here). Save The Colorado pointed out that many alternatives are faster, easier, and cheaper than building massive dams, including storing water underground.

With even more irony, the DOGE post comes at the exact time that the Colorado River Water Users Association convenes in Las Vegas locked in a bitter dispute about the large-scale impacts of declining flows in the river caused by climate change, a problem that will be exacerbated by Denver Water’s Gross Dam project that is designed to further drain the Colorado River.

In fact, the judge in the Gross Dam case repeatedly rebuked Denver Water and the Army Corp of Engineers for ignoring climate change and potentially worsening the high stakes gambit occurring in Las Vegas right now.

It makes no more sense to build a new dam on the Colorado River than it does on Mars. The waste of taxpayer dollars, and increasing the federal deficit, are important and serious business.

DOGE needs to do its homework if it wants to be taken seriously.

The DOGE post also comes just two weeks after the former Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Daniel P. Beard, publicly asked DOGE to consider abolishing the federal agency he formerly directed , an agency that was created by Congress to build dams over 100 years ago.

So far, Commissioner Beard has not been contacted by DOGE.