Colorado water-quality regulators agreed Tuesday to raise permitting fees by 13% to 14% in exchange for taking steps to speed up the process and reduce permitting backlogs that now affect 46% of applicants.
Neither business groups nor utilities opposed the fee hike, reasoning that it is necessary to boost the Colorado Water Quality Control Division’s staffing and infrastructure in a way that it can clear the backlog in the coming years. But several asked the Colorado Water Quality Control Commission for regulatory changes that they believe will ensure an improvement in permitting and give them more chance for them to let the state know when it proposes provisions that they consider infeasible.
After some two years of discussions on the subject and the WQCD’s recent submission of an updated proposal that sought to consider the operators’ concerns, WQCC members made few changes to the plan during a four-hour hearing. Instead, they lauded regulators and the regulated community for working closely together to find consensus and said they hope the work will result in the increased efficiency that both businesses and legislators have sought.
“I really do believe it modernizes the permitting process. It’s going to increase the transparency, and, in my opinion, it really does protect public participation,” commissioner Julie Zahringer said. “It does clearly attempt to address the causes of backlogs.”
New rules affect large swath of businesses
Any Colorado business or utility that discharges stormwater or processed water into natural waterways requires a clean-water or a drinking-water permit. So, the new rules and fees impact everything from industrial facilities to construction companies and from mines to public water and wastewater systems — all costs likely to be passed along to customers.
Prior to 2023, however, the division that inspects for and issues those permits had no ability to adjust fees to reflect its costs, having instead to seek fee increases from a Legislature that often was reluctant to boost costs that hit everyday Coloradans. So, the WQCD had a backlog impacting 75% of water permits by 2022, frustrating both applicants and environmental groups because companies would have to continue operating on outdated permits for years without regulators being able to adjust provisions.
In 2023, legislators passed a law giving the appointed WQCC the ability to adjust fees on its own, but impacted businesses demanded that they get better service if they were going to be paying higher rates. Thus, legislators passed another law in 2025 requiring streamlining of the permitting process — a law that is still being implemented but that was reflected in Tuesday’s decision.
The 13% increase in drinking-water permit fees and 14% increase in clean-water permit fees is expected to raise about $610,000 annually that will be put to clearing the backlog, which has dropped to 46% of applications due to temporary legislative cash infusions. There was no resistance Tuesday to the higher fees from operators that pay them.
“There is broad support for paying fees to the division to sustain the important and necessary work that you do,” said Weston Martin, manager for the Plum Creek Water Reclamation Authority and chairman of the Colorado Wastewater Utility Council.
Debate over how to speed clean water permitting
But business groups and utilities asked for a return on their investment that doesn’t leave them operating with long-outdated permits, and environmental groups asked that any changes that increase efficiency don’t cut public scrutiny out of the process. And details of those two requests occupied the commission’s attention for most of Tuesday’s hearing.
WQCD officials proposed creation of a preliminary-review process where applicants can correct any statements of fact — incorrect information about their facility, for example — before public notice of the draft permits are offered. The purpose of this, explained WQCD operations program manager MaryAnn Nason, was to move quickly to the public process in which parties could debate provisions of the permit rather than the validity of small details.
To speed the process, state regulators proposed that applicants have 14 days to call out objective errors but not subjective errors such as interpretations of law or guidance. The CWUC and several local wastewater systems argued they should be able to ask for all errors to be addressed during that early period, but WQCC members agreed that could slow the process too much and that subjective questions deserve open debate.
“The public should be part of those discussions, not just the permittees and the division,” argued Meg Parish, an attorney representing groups such as Conservation Colorado, Denver Trout Unlimited and GreenLatinos.
Levels of data disclosure, review at issue
WQCD officials and permittees also differed over how much supporting material the division must provide to justify the proposed conditions of its permits, such as effluent limits or monitoring requirements.
While groups like the CWUC wanted it to provide all data used in decisions to permit applicants, the WQCD proposed limiting releasable materials to key materials used in its methodology in order to expedite the process. A compromise, suggested by the Colorado Parks & Wildlife division, will require regulators to provide spreadsheets on all materials if those spreadsheets are readily available.
Several wastewater systems also asked to expand preliminary reviews to include not just individual permits given to larger companies and utilities but general permits that are given to smaller systems and then followed with certifications with more specific provisions.
CWUC leaders said that WQCD officials sometimes add on costly and technically difficult provisions in general-permit certifications that the permittees have no chance to challenge without being able to see a preliminary permit. However, regulators noted that the 30 general permits they’ve issued contain 6,600 certifications that, if subjected to preliminary review, would slow permitting substantially, and WQCC members agreed with them.
Final water permitting rules aim to reach consensus
Finally, commission members decided to take no action on a hotly debated proposal — whether the WQCD should be able to make changes to administratively extended permits that have expired but that remain in place while it works to clear the permit backlog. The CWUC sought the provision, saying that continual operations under old permits doesn’t let some wastewater systems to expand to meet customer need, but the WQCD noted the U.S. Environmental Policy has said that states can’t make changes to federal permits.
In a compromise supported by business groups like the Colorado Chamber of Commerce, the WQCD said it would not address the subject in its rules — a way to allow it to find alternative solutions to outdated permits without clashing with federal regulators. That can be done through steps like targeted non-enforcement of conditions in outdated permits and the speeding-up of permit-renewal consideration for facilities that need expansion, WQCD clean-water permitting and enforcement program manager Michael Roach said.
While the final, unanimous approval of the new fees and the expedited permitting process left some utilities wanting more concessions than they received, it also seemed to strike a balance largely supported by utilities, conservation groups and regulators.
“We are truly aimed at trying to improve the way we do things with permits as well as trying to keep our permit process financially sustainable,” Nason told the WQCC.