U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd, who represents Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, wants to be like water – whenever a challenge arises while working on legislation in Congress, Hurd said he tries to flow around it rather than push through it.
“I tell a lot of my constituents, we need to be like water when it comes to an obstacle,” Hurd said in an interview with The Durango Herald on Tuesday at the Durango-La Plata County Airport. “What does water do when it reaches an obstacle? It either goes around the obstacle or it wears it down. And that’s an attitude and philosophy that I bring to this job.”
Water is central to Hurd’s philosophy, he said, both literally and figuratively. As representative for Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, which encompasses 27 counties in arid, rural Colorado, water is life, and much of his work revolves around that.
Water is among many other issues that voters tasked Hurd with addressing when he was sworn in as representative on Jan. 3, 2025. The Durango Herald sat down with the freshman congressman Tuesday to talk about climate policy, the balance of powers in the federal government and the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
Energy, like water, is something Hurd thinks about often in his work in Congress, he said. Specifically, he said, the sources of the energy Coloradans use are an important issue for him.
“I am an all-of-the-above,” Hurd said. “I support an all of the above energy strategy. So that includes renewables, it includes hydrocarbons, it includes a balanced use of resources.”
Hurd was one of a handful of Republicans who voted against a provision of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that ended Biden-era tax credits for home renewable energy.
Colorado is facing a second winter plagued by record-low snow totals and weeks of unseasonably high temperatures, which puts the state’s water supply in question. Climate change is a driver behind that trend.
“I think one of the ways that we can lower our carbon footprint in the carbon intensity of generation is by producing more energy here in Colorado, including from some of those traditional resources and making sure that we hold industry accountable and we have a predictable set of regulations that's scientifically informed and also business-friendly,” Hurd said.
Expanding Colorado’s energy portfolio to include coal, nuclear and renewable energy, along with business-friendly regulatory strategies, is a good way to address climate change while allowing Colorado to grow, Hurd said.
Water was central to a recent controversy that pitted Hurd against President Donald Trump. Earlier in January, the president vetoed the Finish the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act, sponsored by Hurd and Rep. Lauren Boebert and passed by both the House and the Senate.
The bill would have brought clean drinking water to 50,000 residents of southeast Colorado. Trump’s veto of the bipartisan bill was considered by some, including Boebert, to be political retaliation against a state that does not align with the president.
“I was deeply disappointed by the president's veto of that project,” Hurd said.
Trump has used the presidency to subvert both the courts and Congress through the use of tariffs, executive orders and other legally questionable rulings. Hurd said Congress has to work to be a better check against what he called an “aggressive executive.”
“I think that Congress needs to do a better job of reasserting its authority under Article One of the Constitution,” Hurd said.
Hurd acknowledged that the ceding of powers to the executive branch is not unique to this administration. For example, he said, he is in support of a bill that would restore Congress’ control of the tariff power under Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution.
“Our founders were very concerned about a concentration of power in government, and one of the ways that they addressed that was having that separation of powers and checks and balances,” Hurd said. “I think over time, we’ve evolved away from that, and we’ve moved more power to the executive. I’m a very staunch believer that Congress needs to do a better job of reestablishing that authority.”
Throughout Trump’s second term, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation operations – including legally questionable uses of force by ICE – have sparked mass protests and civil unrest.
In October, peaceful protesters in Durango were pepper sprayed and shot with rubber bullets by ICE agents, and a woman was thrown down an embankment by an agent for filming him. In January, Renee Good and Alex Pretti were both shot by ICE agents during protests in Minnesota. Investigations have been ongoing, though the Department of Homeland Security has been uncooperative with local law enforcement.
“I do worry that we might be at an inflection point if we don’t turn down the temperature,” Hurd said.
Hurd said accountability and transparency are needed to turn down the temperature. That, he said, included making ICE agents more identifiable – and therefore accountable – by not wearing masks, save for instances where agents could be put at risk.
“As a general matter, we should be able to identify our law enforcement officers, and masks are not appropriate,” Hurd said. “From my perspective, having law enforcement officers that wear masks should be the very small exception of cases as a general matter.”
However, he said, there must be more coordination between local, state and federal law enforcement on deportation operations.
“I would caution people from taking the impression that everything that’s happening is what we’re seeing in Minneapolis,” Hurd said. “There are a lot of other instances where law enforcement is working together and partnering on that federal, state and local level to safely remove the illegal immigrants that have committed crimes from our communities in a way that is safe.”
sedmondson@durangoherald.com
