Water levels across the four reservoirs taps to serve its 103,000 customers in Douglas County are down by 20% from where they usually sit at this time of year.
Aurora has levied close to 200 fines to homeowners for violating city water restrictions this summer, a marked increase from the half-dozen it issued last year.
And tubing enthusiasts in Golden are emerging from Clear Creek with scrapes and bruises because of stream flows that are just over a quarter of what they should be at this point in July.
“This is definitely the lowest water level we’ve seen in the creek since 2002,” said Golden Deputy City Manager Carly Lorentz, who noted the 80-cubic-feet-per-second rhythm of the creek is akin to a mid-September volume. “But that low flow hasn’t scared anybody away.”
Welcome to one of the hottest and driest summers metro Denver has seen in years, notwithstanding scattered monsoon rain relief last week in pockets of the Front Range. And the critical buffer the state relies on — stored water in reservoirs — is shrinking steadily, hobbled by the lowest recorded snowpack in Colorado since 1941.
Cities and towns are grappling with whether to boost limits on water consumption, especially with forecasts calling for high temperatures to remain in the 90s well into this week. And don’t be surprised if a citation arrives in your mailbox, as new monitoring technology gives water providers a precise view of who is complying with watering rules at any hour — and who is trying to get away with an extra helping of forbidden H2O.
“I think it’s safe to say that 2026 will go down as the record drought year, and hopefully it won’t be exceeded for a long time,” said Jason Ullmann, Colorado’s state engineer. “But if we don’t get a good snowpack this winter, next year will be more difficult than this year.”
The state’s reservoirs are at 65% to 75% of where they should be at this time of year, Ullmann said.
And while parts of metro Denver got a slight reprieve from the dryness and heat last week — Thursday was the first day Denver saw a high temperature below 90 degrees in nearly two weeks, according to state climatologist Russ Schumacher — there’s a lot more summer to go.
After Denver saw its first 100-degree day of the season last week, temperatures are once again flirting with triple digits this weekend. Water managers everywhere are on edge.
Last week, Castle Rock , mandating a two-day-per-week watering limit, both by sprinkler and by hand. Most municipalities and utilities, including Denver Water, had already enacted similar watering restrictions earlier this year under levels they classified as Stage 1.
Mark Marlowe, the director of Castle Rock Water, said voluntary reductions in water use weren’t cutting it in the town of nearly 90,000, despite the town’s ban on the installation of thirsty new turf lawns and a recent ordinance for dormant and brown lawns.
Castle Rock was seeking a 10% cut in water use but “we weren’t seeing any meaningful reductions,” Marlowe said. While Plum Creek — a drinking water source for the town — has dried to a trickle, Castle Rock was still pushing out 18 million gallons on average to its customers every day, he said.
Now Castle Rock wants a reduction in water use of 25%. Violators , then $25 for a second violation and increasing amounts for subsequent breaches.
“It’s understandable; people are trying to protect their landscapes,” Marlowe said. “But when we get into a drought like this, we have to reduce water use.”
‘We need them to save more’
Denver Water, the state’s largest water provider with 1.5 million customers across the city and some suburbs, was shooting for a 20% reduction in water use under mandatory watering rules implemented in late March.
So far, water use has dropped 5%, said Greg Fisher, Denver Water’s manager of demand planning.
While the utility will happily take that savings to the water bank, Fisher’s message to customers is simple: “We need them to save more.”
Denver Water is preparing to turn up the heat on enforcement of its water restrictions in the latter half of summer, he said.
At the beginning of the season, the utility focused on educating customers. Homeowners reported to the utility’s tip line were sent postcards and robocalls , which limit outdoor watering to two assigned days per week. Watering also must occur before 10 a.m. or after 6 p.m.
“The vast majority of people, you only have to talk to them once,” Fisher said.
Residents found breaking the rules for the first time will receive a formal warning. Then fines kick in: $250 all the way up to $1,000, depending on the number of violations.
Denver Water officials have not yet seriously considered implementing stricter restrictions, Fisher said. Under Stage 2 rules — the next level of restrictions — the utility would ban lawn irrigation, limit watering to once a week and require restaurants to provide drinking water only upon request.
Users need to reduce water use — and hope for a good winter snowfall — to keep those tighter restrictions off the table next summer, Fisher said.
“More severe stages are certainly on the table for next year; the huge uncertainty is the winter,” he said. “… Everything we’re doing this year is to prevent that.”
As of last week, the water provider’s 10-reservoir system . Normally, the supply system is nearly full this time of year. Despite its grim standing, Fisher said, the reservoir situation is significantly better than in 2002, another year of record-breaking drought.
In Aurora, concerns over water bottler
That parched summer 24 years ago has become the “floor for modeling” stresses to Aurora’s water system, utility spokeswoman Shonnie Cline said.
But 2026 is giving 2002 a run for its money.
“We are seeing our reserves drawn down,” Cline said. “It is concerning.”
The dozen reservoirs Colorado’s third-largest city taps are at 51% of capacity — well below the 85% threshold they typically meet in late July. The city expects Spinney Mountain Reservoir in Park County, which on the Colorado and Arkansas rivers, to plunge to just a fifth of its capacity by year’s end, Cline said.
“About every three weeks, we’re losing about 1% of storage,” Cline said of the overall system, which serves around 400,000 customers.
One of those customers, California-based Niagara Bottling, is Aurora Water’s largest. It used more than 200 million gallons last year as it bottled city tap water to sell to retailers for their store-brand bottled water offerings.
Niagara so far has refused to adhere to Aurora Water’s mandate of a 20% reduction in use, as first — an issue Cline says the utility is in negotiations with the company about.
“It can be harder for businesses to pivot (than residential customers),” she told The Denver Post.
Niagara’s water consumption amounts to 1% of the utility’s total annual water output, she said. Last week, Niagara provided The Post with a statement saying the company “is willing to do its part to reduce water consumption during drought conditions.”
“Thatap why Niagara has already deployed meaningful water-efficiency measures, including the installation of an in-plant recovery system expected to save approximately 8 million to 10 million gallons of water in 2026, and (approximately) 20 million gallons annually thereafter,” the company said.
Meanwhile, Tim York, Aurora Water’s manager of water conservation, uses the latest smart meter technology — dubbed — to precisely track customer use across the city, button up water waste and pinpoint who the violators are.
So far, Aurora Water has issued around 200 citations for breaking watering rules, with for repeated infractions. York said the city so far was meeting its goal of a 20% reduction in water use, but the utility must remain vigilant.
“We do need to hold that into the next few months,” he said.
Officials at Highlands Ranch Water said customers in the Douglas County suburb didn’t necessarily wait until late spring to start up their sprinklers, given the extraordinarily warm and dry winter and spring this year.
“The irrigation season started a lot sooner,” said Swithin Dick, the utility’s water rights administrator.
That has added up to 2.3% more water consumed than expected through the first six months of the year, Dick said — an amount equaling 48.2 million gallons.
“The increased temperatures that you had this year really had a huge impact on the streams and the vegetation,” Dick said. “We are seeing a lot more yellow turf here in Highlands Ranch than we’ve seen in other years.”
But the message about saving water may be getting through, albeit with some old-fashioned prodding. Highlands Ranch Water has so far issued 300 violation notices to customers this year, the vast majority of them warnings.
“Most people need a tap on the shoulder to make them take a look at their sprinkler system,” said Paige McFarland, the utility’s water efficiency coordinator. “But we are physically present in the community, patrolling in the early morning.”
El Niño relief on horizon?
There are signs that earnest messaging about conserving water can change behavior, even without the punitive measures. In Erie, town leaders this spring asked residents and homeowners associations to voluntarily limit watering to just two days a week.
From April through June, Erie used about 475 million gallons of water, which was “roughly 54 million gallons less than the five-year average rate,” .
Whether 2027 will see the same need for watering curtailments is not yet known, but there are indications Coloradans could get more help from Mother Nature in the coming months.
The National Weather Service last month has established itself in the Pacific Ocean, with warming ocean temperatures bringing better chances of heavier snows this winter and monsoon rains this summer.
The weather service characterizes the current El Niño pattern as “very strong.”
“There’s a reason to be optimistic that things will get wetter later in the year,” Schumacher, the state climatologist, said. “If nothing else, it reduces the chance of a historically awful snowpack like last winter.”
But the longer-term outlook for moisture in Colorado is much bleaker.
Extreme snow droughts like the one that plagued the West last winter will become more frequent — and eventually the norm — across much of the West as climate change fuels warmer temperatures, according to a study led by a Colorado School of Mines professor.
The study, published last week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concluded that the chance of a winter like the one just passed will hover around 10% through the end of the decade if fossil fuel emissions aren’t curbed.
By the 2050s, the risk will rise to 32%, and then to 87% by the 2090s, according to the study.
But Cline, with Aurora Water, can’t wait around until the dawn of the 22nd century to worry about possible conditions on the ground. Her utility’s concerns are more immediate.
“We have to assume a worst-case scenario and hold everybody to account for their water use now,” she said. “We knew 2026 was going to be bad, but we’re all the more worried about 2027 and 2028.”
