For many Colorado communities, wildfire resilience begins with healthy upstream watersheds. Nature-based strategies – like forest thinning, stream restoration, and erosion control – can make all the difference, but making a strong business case and securing long-term funding can be challenging. That’s why WaterNow Alliance, in partnership with One Water Econ and the Water Center at Penn, developed the Colorado Wildfire Resilience Financing Dashboard – with generous support from the Innovative Finance for National Forests grant program. This new tool is designed for Colorado water providers ready to invest in wildfire resilience and upstream watershed health.
The interactive decision tool is the dashboard’s core resource. The tool helps Colorado water managers explore financing options for various upstream watershed health and wildfire resilience projects via municipal bonds, Clean Water State Revolving Fund loans, and Drinking Water State Revolving Fund loans. These capital dollars can lead to larger-scale investments in wildlife resilience projects.
To provide an initial assessment of the types of financing available for resilience projects, the decision tool walks users through four key threshold criteria. Based on their responses, users receive customized results about the:
- Types of financing options that are feasible for their specific nature-based projects,
- Multiple benefits that correspond to those projects and a framework for valuing those benefits,
- Legal and accounting pathways that can enable financing upstream watershed health interventions, and,
- Whether partnerships are in place to help ensure success.
Tailored results can be emailed, printed, or downloaded, making it easy to share the materials with colleagues and facilitate further conversations between watershed staff and finance teams.
Beyond the decision tool, the dashboard includes in-depth guidance to help water providers navigate considerations about whether and how to pursue upstream watershed projects, including:
- An overview of the types of watershed interventions Colorado water providers can deploy to achieve resilience to wildfires, improve water quality, increase recreation access, and other benefits,
- A framework for how to value the co-benefits of resilience interventions (i.e., make the most comprehensive business case for these projects),
- How to build partnerships to help ensure success, and,
- Guidance on possible pathways for using debt to pay for watershed interventions get to scale.
Examples from Denver Water, Greeley, and the Coalition for the Poudre River Watershed within the dashboard highlight real-world case studies on how valuing and financing wildfire resilience interventions can work.
Ready to take the first step in financing your upstream watershed health project? Explore the dashboard here!