With the snip of a ribbon Tuesday, Colorado water managers officially opened a new waterway in Grand County that reconnects a stretch of the Colorado River for the first time in four decades to help fish and aquatic life. The milelong waterway, called the Colorado River Connectivity Channel, skirts around Windy Gap Reservoir, where a dam has broken the natural flow of the river since 1985. The $33 million project’s goal is to return a stretch of the river to its former health, a river where aquatic life thrived and fish could migrate and spawn. But getting to the dedication ceremony Tuesday took years of negotiations that turned enemies into collaborators and can serve as a model for future water projects, officials say.