Durango (USA) Resolution: rights for the Animas River

Summary

In November 2025, undergraduate students in Professor Becky Clausen’s Water Justice class at Fort Lewis College successfully convinced the Durango City Council to adopt a resolution acknowledging inherent rights for the Animas River, which flows through the center of Durango, Colorado. After spending roughly three months researching river-protection frameworks, surveying community perspectives, examining case studies from other municipalities, and drafting policy language, the students presented their resolution to the Council at its November 18 meeting, where it received formal support.

The timing aligned with the tenth anniversary of the 2015 Gold King Mine spill, a catastrophic event that thrust the Animas River into international focus and underscored the need for new approaches to watershed justice. The resolution recognizes the Animas River’s fundamental rights, including the right to flow, flourish, and maintain its natural ecological systems, and requires the City of Durango to consider these rights in all future planning and decision-making processes. It also acknowledges the river’s deep social, cultural, and spiritual significance, particularly to neighboring Indigenous Tribal Nations, the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute tribes, whose traditional ecological knowledge was used as inspiration for the proposal.

As part of the resolution’s ongoing commitments, Fort Lewis College’s Four Corners Water Center will produce annual reports on the health and rights of the Animas River, its tributaries, and its watershed, creating a recurring mechanism for public accountability and ecological monitoring. Students described their successful effort as inspirational and impactful, noting that the project introduced them to civic engagement, environmental policy, and the real-world implications of water justice work.