Congresswoman Boebert’s op-ed was originally published in The Denver Gazette.

Whiskey is for drinking, and water is for fighting. That old Colorado line is still true. Water decides whether a farm stays in the family, whether a small town can fight a fire and whether our kids have a reason to stay. I will always fight for it.

In the 4th District, that fight is not theoretical. Families in the southeast still drink groundwater that can carry radium and uranium. Towns on the Eastern Plains are one well failure away from a boil order. Farmers on the South Platte are watching interstate fights decide how much water is left for the next generation. Cities along the Front Range are trying to get off nonrenewable groundwater before the wells run down. None of that gets fixed with a press release. It gets fixed with storage, pipes, treatment plants and a spine in Washington.

Southeastern Colorado has been waiting on this water since the project was authorized. About 39 communities and roughly 50,000 people in Bent, Crowley, Kiowa, Otero, Prowers and Pueblo counties were promised clean, reliable water from Pueblo Reservoir. Many of those families still drink groundwater that can carry radium and uranium. A town should not have to fail a health standard while a project that was already approved sits unfinished.

That is why the conduit still matters. It is not a luxury. It is the difference between safe drinking water and water that fails a health standard. I have supported finishing it, and I will keep fighting until Southeastern Colorado gets the water it was promised. I have worked to have the Finish the Arkansas Valley Conduit language pass the House of Representatives twice in the last three months, and I will get it across the finish line.

While that larger fight continues, I have delivered funding that is already on the books. Thirteen of my community project requests were signed into law, including $11.75 million for water projects across the district. That money is going to real work: a pipeline from Plum Creek to Rueter-Hess Reservoir so Castle Rock can store renewable water instead of mining groundwater; a regional treatment plant at Cobb Lake for Severance, Windsor, Eaton and neighbors in Weld County; consolidation of the Prairie View Ranch system near Wiggins so families do not lose drinking water and fire protection; a new wastewater plant in Lamar; well redundancy in Kiowa; reverse-osmosis treatment in Brush; and system upgrades in Ovid, Louviers and Walsh. These are not headlines. They are pipes in the ground.

I am also opposing the Perkins County Canal. Nebraska wants to revive a century-old claim, cut a canal through Sedgwick County and take South Platte water that Colorado farms and towns depend on. It has sued Colorado in the U.S. Supreme Court and has threatened eminent domain against Colorado landowners who refused to sell. That is the wrong way to settle a compact. Colorado is meeting its obligations on the South Platte. Nebraska does not get to seize Colorado land or dry up irrigated acres in Sedgwick, Logan and Washington counties to build up a project that is a bad bet for both states.

Language in the Senate-drafted Water Resources Development Act has been quietly moving forward that would force the Army Corps of Engineers to approve a permit so that this canal can move forward. Colorado, the number one rule is to protect our water. The fear is that talking about it will complicate the Supreme Court case. Here is the truth. If that Senate language moves forward and the Corps is pushed to sign off, the Supreme Court won’t matter. The permit becomes the project. Nebraska gets to dig while Colorado is still arguing the law. I will not trade away Sedgwick County in a permitting deadline written for another state.

The principle is simple. Colorado water should stay under Colorado control. We store it. We clean it. We deliver it to the people who have the right to use it. We do not give it away in a backroom deal, and we do not let another state dig a canal through our farms because a 1923 compact is suddenly convenient.

I will keep funding the projects rural towns can actually build, push to finish the Arkansas Valley Conduit, and keep opposing the Perkins County Canal in the Senate WRDA bill. Water is how Colorado works. I am never giving it up.

Lauren Boebert represents Colorado’s 4th District in Congress and serves on the House Committee on Natural Resources and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.