Eric Kuhn

Eric Kuhn is the retired General Manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District and co-author with John Fleck of Science Be Dammed: How Ignoring Inconvenient Science Drained the Colorado River, University of Arizona Press, 2019. 

Eric started employment with the Colorado River District in 1981 as Assistant Secretary-Engineer. In 1996 he was appointed General Manager, a position he held until his retirement in 2018.

Eric and John’s book, Science Be Dammed, is about Colorado River hydrology, what we knew, when we knew it, and how we used it to shape the over-allocation of the river under the 1922 compact, the other major provisions of the law-of-the-river, and the projects we have in place today.

Most recently Eric authored “The Risks and Potential Impacts of a Colorado River Compact Curtailment on Colorado River In-Basin and Transmountain Water Rights Within Colorado” published by the Colorado Environmental Law Journal (Spring 2024) and with co-authors Rin Tara and John Fleck “A Horse Named the Stream Depletion Theory: The History and Negotiation of the Upper Colorado River Basin Compact,” published by the Natural Resources Journal (UNM, Winter 2025).