The Colorado Dragon Boat Festival will return to Sloan’s Lake this summer, despite concerns about water quality that nearly forced the event to change locations.
The festival is the largest annual celebration of Asian and Asian American heritage in Colorado, according to the nonprofit group that runs it, as well as the largest Dragon Boat Festival in the U.S. Around 200,000 people attended in 2025.
But organizers were forced to move it back from its traditional late-July weekend to September last year due to safety and health issues raised by Denver Parks & Recreation, which manages the lake and surrounding park. Those concerns included dead fish, increasingly warm and shallow water, blue algae blooms, and a lack of filtration from untreated runoff pouring into the 177-acre lake.
A year earlier, the lake experienced a mass die-off of fish, with an estimated 5,000 going belly-up and washing ashore, according to the city. Algae growth encouraged by warm weather and low water levels drains the lake of oxygen, and its shallowness prevents cold, safe pockets for marine life to shelter during high-temperature days in the summer.
Sara Moore, executive director of the Colorado Dragon Boat Festival, told The Denver Post that she was notified earlier this year that parks officials “are doing everything within their power to ensure the health of the lake.”
This year, the festival will take place Aug. 29-30, at the park, which is located east of Sheridan Boulevard and north of 17th Avenue. Registration for racers is open now at . This year marks the festival’s 26th incarnation.
From a water quality standpoint, Sloan’s Lake is currently in good condition with no signs of blue-green algae blooms, according to Denver Parks & Recreation. Still, it’s closed to other events this summer, and won’t be open to event permits until the first weekend of September — or just after the Colorado Dragon Boat Festival.
“The primary challenge we’ve seen recently is reduced water inflow caused by ongoing drought, which has lowered water levels and could create future water quality concerns if conditions don’t improve,” said Stephanie Figueroa of Denver Parks & Recreation. “This week’s precipitation will provide some short-term relief.”
The parks department plans to work on phosphorus mitigation in advance of the festival to reduce the nutrients available to the oxygen-sucking algae, she added.
Without consistent spring and summer precipitation, however, the lake will return to its same sorry state in the coming weeks, said Kurt Weaver, executive director of the Sloan’s Lake Park Foundation. “The drought situation already has it at its lowest water level in a while. It’s going to lack the oxygen and nutrients it needs, and we’ll see more fish kills and more problems.”
He believes the lake needs to be drained and dredged to increase depth and water quality, as well as adding filtration to the water that flows into the lake from various cities and districts.
Those range from Lakewood and Wheat Ridge to unincorporated Jefferson County — all of which need to approve the rehab project due to their individual rights to the water, Weaver said. His organization is working with all of them, as well as the city of Denver, to negotiate terms of the upgrades.
The Colorado Dragon Boat Race last year featured 41 teams navigating the lake’s course in elaborate, colorful boats. The designs and culture of Dragon Boat races have roots stretching back thousands of years to China’s Duanwu Festival, “which remains a traditional holiday in mainland China and Taiwan,” organizers wrote online. “Today, it has spread all over the globe.”
As the third most-visited park in the city’s system (behind City Park and Washington Park), Denver Parks & Recreation does a great job of keeping Sloan’s Lake’s grass and other features tended, Weaver said. But with an average depth of 3.5 feet, along with steadily rising sediment, the lake itself is in terrible health. So much so that the dragon boats may start scraping the bottom of Sloan’s Lake in the next couple of years.
That would be a shame, Moore said, since the Dragon Boat Festival and its race typically joined by dozens of vendors, more than 50 cultural performances, food, drink activities, and more.
The organization also helms the Dragon Boat Film Festival alongside Denver Film, which hosts screenings at its Sie FilmCenter. The event on March 22.
“We’re building our coalition and the city is helping with planning, so we’re excited to get that going,” Weaver said. “We’ll also have two cleanups a month now through November, which will help improve the park.”
Volunteers can sign up for cleanup days at , Weaver said.
