House declines to override Trump veto of bill to complete water pipeline in southeastern Colorado
The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday declined to override President Donald Trump’s veto of a bill intended to help complete a pipeline to carry clean water to communities in southeastern Colorado
The vote was 248 in favor of overriding the veto and 177 opposed. It needed the support of two-thirds of those voting to pass.
Thirty-five Republicans joined all of the voting Democrats in supporting the override, but it wasn’t enough. All eight U.S. House members from Colorado — four Democrats and four Republicans — voted to override the veto.
The Finish the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act passed Congress unanimously last year. It would shift more of the cost of completing the Arkansas Valley Conduit onto the federal government and away from the communities in southeastern Colorado, many of them poor, it aims to serve.
The conduit, first approved in 1962 by President John F. Kennedy, is a 130-mile pipeline that is supposed to span Lake Pueblo to the Lamar area and carry clean water for municipal and industrial uses. The communities the pipeline aims to serve struggle to provide water to residents and businesses because of naturally occurring salinity or radionuclide contamination in their groundwater.
The counties served by the conduit — Pueblo, Otero, Crowley, Kiowa, Bent and Prowers — all voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2024.
In vetoing the bill, Trump complained about shifting the cost burden onto the federal taxpayer.
“Ending the massive cost of taxpayer handouts and restoring fiscal sanity is vital to economic growth and the fiscal health of the nation,” he said in a letter explaining his decision.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated the bill would add less than $500,000 to the federal government’s cost of the project. The total cost of the project is estimated to be $1.3 billion shared between the federal and local governments.
But the decision also came as Trump is intensifying his reprisals against Colorado over the state’s refusal to release Tina Peters from prison.
Peters, the former clerk in Mesa County, is serving a nine-year state prison sentence for orchestrating a breach of her county’s election system as part of a failed attempt to uncover voter fraud. The president vowed to punish Colorado as long as Peters remains in prison — and he appears to be making good on that promise.
U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Windsor Republican who was the main sponsor of the legislation, and whose district would benefit most from it, has been highly critical of the veto.
“Nothing says ‘America First’ like denying clean drinking water to 50,000 people in southeast Colorado, many of whom enthusiastically voted for him in all three elections,” Boebert said of the president when the veto was announced.
Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., left, speaks with Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., during a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Boebert, normally a Trump ally, spoke on the House floor Thursday to implore her colleagues to override the veto.
“This is a piece of legislation that has gone through committee, has been negotiated, has been debated, has gone back and forth between both chambers — and we were able to pass this single-subject legislation all the way through with unanimous support in this body and in the Senate,” she said.
U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd, a Grand Junction Republican whose district would also benefit from the bill, said the override was a test of whether the federal government was willing to honor its commitments.
“These are real families, real towns and real public health consequences,” he said. “Rural Colorado and rural America, more broadly, voted overwhelmingly for this president and for an agenda that promised they would not be forgotten. They expected Washington to keep its word, not abandon them midway.”
U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Lafayette, joined his Republican colleagues from Colorado in asking that the House override the veto.
“As you consider where you land on this particular vote, let me be abundantly clear: it does not matter if your community supported Donald Trump politically if we don’t take this step,” he said. “Trust me — no town is safe, no county is safe, no state is safe from political retaliation by the administration. We will be back here on the floor debating a veto for a project in Arkansas or in Texas or in Ohio.”
Trump’s veto of the Finish the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act was one of two the House declined to override Thursday. The other veto was of a bill that would have designated a site in Everglades National Park as a part of the Miccosukee Indian Reservation.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said leadership was not urging — or “whipping” — members on how to vote. He said he would personally vote to sustain the vetoes and the president’s message opposing the bills “sounded very reasonable to me.” He said he understood the concerns of the Colorado lawmakers about the veto and would work to help them on the pipeline issue going forward.
Boebert said she had been talking to colleagues individually about overriding Trump’s veto of the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act, but wasn’t sure about hitting the two-thirds threshold. Some colleagues “don’t want to go against the president,” she said.
The override’s failure in the House means it won’t make it to the Senate.
“This is Washington at its worst,” U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, a Colorado Democrat who worked on the bill. “Every single U.S. House member supported this bill to bring clean water to southeastern Colorado before Christmas — Democrats and Republicans. But today they refused to stick to their guns and override President Trump’s retaliatory veto. Rural Colorado is paying the price for these political games.”
This is a developing story that will be updated.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Corrections:
This story was updated at 1:50 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 8, 2025, to correct which members of Colorado’s U.S. House delegation supported the override vote. All eight U.S. House members from Colorado — four Democrats and four Republicans — voted to override the veto.
