Public health officials believe the spill at the city of Pueblo’s wastewater treatment plant, which is just east of Interstate 25, started Wednesday and was discovered Thursday.

“Laboratory results for water samples collected by Pueblo County yesterday from areas impacted by the spill are expected later today,” state officials said in a news release Friday afternoon.

Pueblo and state officials are working to make sure people affected by the spill are notified, and the Department of Agriculture notified produce growers in the Arkansas River Valley “upon learning the extent of the situation from the city of Pueblo.”

This is a developing story and may be updated.

The Colorado Attorney General’s Office and the 14th District Attorney’s Office this week charged Fabrizio Lorenzin, 65, with four felonies in connection with repeated sabotage of the and its security cameras over several years.

The remote ditch system begins at 11,200 feet high on its namesake pass in the mountains and helps funnel water to Northglenn and Golden. The in Guanella Reservoir in Clear Creek County and in Standley Lake in Adams County.

Lorenzin allegedly forced open headgates on the system’s ditches, damaging the infrastructure and diverting millions of dollars’ worth of drinking water from its intended destination downstream.

Prosecutors allege that he also stole cameras meant to watch the district’s property.

“Protecting critical water infrastructure is a core public safety mission,” Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a news release Friday announcing the charges. “This prosecution reflects our commitment to working side by side with federal and local partners to identify threats quickly and ensure those responsible are held accountable.”

Charging and arrest documents do not specify why Lorenzin allegedly tampered with the gates and diverted water, or for what purpose.

Law enforcement first began investigating the possible tampering with the headgates in August 2019, according to an arrest affidavit documenting the investigation. That’s when four of the gates that control the direction of the flow of water were vandalized, diverting water worth approximately $1.3 million, the affidavit says.

A security camera captured images of an older man with a distinctive backpack, but investigators could not identify him at the time.

Headgates were damaged again in 2022, diverting $4.3 million in water, the affidavit says. Trail cameras again photographed the same man with the same backpack. Another headgate was damaged in 2023 when it was forced open and propped up with rocks. This time, the trail cameras were also stolen.

In 2024, the affidavit says, federal investigators with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency installed three cameras with Apple AirTags attached. More images from the area showed the same man with the same backpack.

In August 2024, the AirTags on the stolen cameras pinged from inside Lorenzin’s home, the affidavit says, and investigators searched it on two occasions, finding the disassembled EPA cameras and a laptop that contained images from other stolen cameras. A review of the search history on the laptop found multiple searches for information related to sabotage on the Berthoud Pass system as well as information about trail cameras and headgates, the documents says.

Lorenzin has been arrested, court records show. He faces one count of tampering with a public water system, two counts of felony theft and one count of tampering with physical evidence.

But Colorado’s low snowpack and minimal rain have drained the reservoir’s water level to an estimated 72% of normal, , which owns it, with about a 2-inch decrease every day. It’s the worst drought Keesling has seen since 2002-03, when the lake dropped 58 feet. He’s heard the reservoir could be down as much as 50 feet by late October.

While Keesling continues to launch from the Dillon side, the Frisco marina is significantly shallower, so it has drastically reduced operations since people have to row out to deeper water. But water-related activities like paddleboarding, sailing, boat rentals, and private charters have plummeted on both sides.

“From a business standpoint, I lost one-way trips from Dillon to Frisco, Frisco to Dillon, private charters out of Frisco, and concert [transportation] out of Frisco to the Dillon Amphitheater,” Keesling said. “Literally, about 90% of my business went away.”

Enter the Captain’s Table.

Keesling launched the gourmet dining experience in early July, welcoming up to 10 guests at a time aboard his 30-foot tritoon for a lake cruise and catered breakfast or dinner. Keesling has teamed up with local restaurants to provide the meals, which are laid out on tables running the length of the boat. (Alcoholic beverages are BYOB, though Keesling provides glassware.)

The menus, available online at , have come from Tavern West, Eclectic Kitchen and Bar, Wildflower BBQ, Enza’s Delicatessen & Market, Blue Moon Bakery and Hacienda Real. Breakfast cruises cost $50 for adults ($25 for kids), plus the cost of the meal, which varies based on the provider. Dinner cruises are $60-$65/adult and $25/kid, plus the meal.

Excursions run about 90 minutes — every Thursday to Sunday through late September — with the dinnertime outings offering sunsets and breakfast cruises usually finding the calmest water. And despite the low water level, Dillon Reservoir, also called Lake Dillon, is beautiful, with 27 miles of shoreline juxtaposed by a background of jagged peaks. The photo opps are unparalleled.

The communal set-up on board encourages conversation from beginning to end, and that translates into word of mouth. Keesling recently had a party of 8 drive up from Denver for the experience. “This group totally caught me by surprise,” he said. “They drove 140 miles [there and back] to have dinner, and they walked off the boat saying this was way more than what they expected.”

The fledgling concept is, in fact, a scaled-down version of a project Keesling had already proposed to Denver Water for sometime in the near future. “That, in essence, is a 60-foot houseboat with a canopy and an inside enclosure that could do food service,” Keesling explained. “My main direction is going after the wedding industry and sizable events.”

Denver Water (not to mention the Dillon Reservoir Recreation Committee, which issues permits) hasn’t given its go-ahead yet, but Keesling is hopeful that a successful summer of Captain’s Table events will be proof of concept. “It����ap unique, it����ap attractive. I think it����ap here to stay,” Keesling said. “The experience is that every seat in the house has the best restaurant window seat in the county.”

In the meantime, the idea has allowed him to salvage the summer season amid extreme drought conditions, support local restaurants with catering orders, and look to building something bigger for the future.

The utility’s on Wednesday voted unanimously to impose the ban, which goes into effect Oct. 1. The new rule adds to drought restrictions in place since spring as Denver Water has attempted to rein in water use.

“We’re facing challenges that we haven’t seen before,” Greg Fisher, Denver Water’s manager of demand planning, .

Denver’s first frost typically falls in the first week of October, so the new rule on watering should not cause much damage to yards as homeowners should already be allowing their yards to go dormant, Fisher said.

Denver Water customers can still water trees, shrubs, vegetables and flowers by hand or using a non-spray irrigation system. Some facilities, like sports fields and public parks, can seek exemptions to the ban on lawn watering.

Prohibiting grass watering after Sept. 30 could save 5,000 acre-feet of water, according to . An acre-foot of water is enough for at least two families’ annual use.

First-time violators of the lawn watering rule will receive a warning. After that, Denver Water staff will impose escalating fines: $250 for the second offense, $500 for the third and $1,000 for the fourth.

Denver Water’s drought rules follow a winter with little snow and an abnormally hot and dry summer. Low snowpack reduced streamflows into Denver Water’s reservoirs to less than a quarter of normal, and extreme drought continues to fry the mountains from which the utility draws its water.

The dry, hot summer — the warmest on record for metro Denver — has not offered relief.

Denver Water’s reservoir system is only 73% full at a time when it is normally 94% full, according to the utility. That percentage may drop to only 60% full before next spring’s runoff, according to Denver Water staff.

The utility’s leaders hoped mandatory watering rules and encouraging customers to conserve water would reduce usage by 20% this summer. While customers have cut back, they have not met the utility’s goal.

Its drought restrictions will stay in place until next spring, Fisher said, when leaders will reassess.

“We hope this winter brings relief,” commissioner Gary Reiff said Wednesday during the meeting. “But we need to preserve our resources in case it does not.”

Denver Water is set to decide Wednesday whether to ban its 1.5 million customers from all lawn watering starting in October, as drought conditions continue across the region.

The new rule, building on current twice-weekly outside watering restrictions, would prohibit customers from watering grass after Sept. 30, before the typical first freeze. A few exceptions would apply, such as for public parks and athletic facilities, with approval from Denver Water.

The Denver Board of Water Commissioners will decide whether to update the utility’s drought response rules during . Denver Water is the largest water utility in Colorado and serves much of the metro area.

The new rules, if adopted, would still allow people to water trees, shrubs, flowers and vegetables by hand or by non-spray irrigation systems, but not by using sprinklers.

“The goal of updating the drought response is to save additional water while protecting the community’s investment in landscapes and preserve water for health, safety, and economic vitality to the greatest extent possible,” .

In addition to new watering rules, restaurants would be able to serve water only upon request if the resolution is adopted.

The combination of this winter’s feeble snowpack and an extremely hot and dry summer has wreaked havoc for the state’s water supply system — and Colorado’s largest utility has not escaped the pain.

Streamflow into Denver Water’s reservoirs was less than a quarter of normal and the lowest recorded in 110 years of recordkeeping. The mountains from which the utility draws its water are in extreme drought. This summer is the hottest on record for metro Denver, with temperatures routinely several degrees above normal.

The drought and heat have left Denver Water’s reservoirs only 73% full at a time when they are normally 94% full, according to the utility. The reservoir system’s levels may drop to only 60% full before next spring’s runoff, it says.

Denver Water began the summer with hopes of reducing water use by 20% through mandatory rules and voluntary conservation by customers. It has not met that goal.

Banning grass watering after Sept. 30 could save 5,000 acre-feet of water, according to the resolution. An acre-foot of water is enough for at least two families’ annual use.

The U.S. Department of the Interior on Friday for the Colorado River that will guide how the basin’s two major reservoirs will operate and how the shrinking river’s water will be allocated across the southwest for the .

While Colorado and the other Upper Basin states — New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — will face no mandatory cuts, the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada will see their collective supply cut by 1.25 million acre-feet in each of the next two years. An acre-foot of water is enough water for two families’ annual needs.

During negotiations, leaders from the Lower Basin states offered to reduce their consumption, and the federal plan implements cuts of similar size. While the federal government has the authority to mandate cuts in the Lower Basin, it does not have similar power over the Upper Basin states, which sit above the river’s two major reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

The decision Friday is the culmination of years of negotiations, studies, public comment periods and modeling. Negotiators from the seven Colorado River basin states first set out to craft a plan to manage the critical waterway for decades. But the negotiators couldn’t agree on a plan, forcing the federal government to implement its own rules for the river.

Instead of a long-term operating plan as in the past, federal authorities created a 10-year framework that requires renegotiating the operating plans every two years, within parameters they set. The two-year plans will determine how much water is released from the river’s two major reservoirs and how deep cuts to water supplies will be for the three states downstream of those water storage banks.

If the states can find consensus on a longer-term plan, it can be substituted in at any point in the coming decade.

“We are grateful for the seven basin states, the 30 basin tribes, Mexico and many other basin stakeholders who have provided the feedback and voluntary arrangements necessary for the development of the 2027-2028 Operating Guidelines,” Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said in a statement Friday. “Forty million people, millions of acres of farmland and ranchland, industries that power the American West, and some of our nation’s fastest-growing metropolitan areas depend on the Colorado River.”

In Colorado — where the river begins its snaking route toward the Gulf of California — the water is used for Western Slope agriculture as well as municipal water supplies across the state, including much of the Front Range. The Colorado River is also an engine for recreation in the state and provides critical habitat for wildlife, including endangered species.

The Department of the Interior on Friday also finalized the 10-year framework, which was first announced earlier this summer. The finalized document, called a record of decision, formally ends a planning process that began in 2022 to replace previous operating plans that expire this year.

“Today’s Record of Decision and two-year guidelines give the Colorado River some badly needed near-term certainty at a moment of extraordinary risk,” California’s top Colorado River negotiator, JB Hamby, said in a statement Friday.

The new plans come as the Colorado River system hovers on the brink of collapse. Long-term drought across the basin has dramatically sapped the river’s flow, while continued overuse of the basin’s stored water has depleted its two major reservoirs.

Lake Powell and Lake Mead sit at record lows not seen since the nation’s two largest reservoirs began filling decades ago. On Wednesday, .

Already this spring, water managers scrambled to send more water from upstream Flaming Gorge Reservoir to Lake Powell to keep its dam’s hydropower turbines running when the winter’s snowpack in the river’s headwaters yielded paltry streamflows. The reservoir could fall so low in early 2027 that water can no longer safely pass through the turbines’ intake tubes, a level called “power pool,”

The depleted reservoirs leave little margin for error in their operations this water year, which begins Oct. 1. Lake Powell will begin the water year very near power pool.

In the near-term, federal officials’ plans focus on keeping water levels at Lake Powell from falling below that level and building a buffer above it.

The two-year plan includes the possibility that water may be sent to Powell from smaller federally managed reservoirs in the Upper Basin, including Colorado’s Blue Mesa Reservoir.

The 10-year federal framework allows for cuts in the Lower Basin up to 3 million acre-feet a year, if needed in future two-year plans. That level of cuts has prompted threats of litigation from officials in Arizona, which would bear the brunt of those reductions. Such a lawsuit would likely end up at the U.S. Supreme Court, which would embroil the basin in years of uncertainty during the legal process.

Arizona’s top Colorado River negotiator, in a letter to federal officials, opposed the 10-year framework, the depth of possible cuts and the lack of mandatory cuts in the Upper Basin.

“Arizona does not accept a framework that gives the federal government the discretion to select from a wide range of alternatives — including catastrophic cuts to the Lower Basin — every two years for the next decade,” Tom Buschatzke wrote in the Aug. 10 letter,

While the plan for the next two years has been finalized, water managers across the basin will continue to negotiate operating guidelines for the next two-year period — or a more long-term strategy that all seven basin states agree upon.

Negotiations have stalled for years in part because the basin states cannot agree on who should bear the brunt of the water-use cuts made necessary by a shrinking river. Upper Basin states have said that they have never used their full legal allotment from the river and, because they are upstream of Lake Powell and Lake Mead, already take cuts every year depending on the amount of water in the river. Lower Basin states have demanded that Upper Basin states share in the pain.

At a Colorado water conference on Thursday, Colorado’s top negotiator Becky Mitchell reiterated her position that water rights owners in the Upper Basin states face cuts every year depending on the amount of water available. Powerful senior water rights that predate the 1922 Colorado River Compact are facing curtailment this year, she noted.

Colorado and the other Upper Basin states will continue working on a program that will pay water users to use less water and store that saved water for dry years, said Amy Ostdiek, chief of the interstate, federal and information section at the Colorado Water Conservation Board, while speaking at the same conference.

That water will then be available to send downstream in dry years and count toward the amount of water the Upper Basin sends to the Lower Basin, as required by the 1922 compact.

“We’re going to be part of the solution … but we can’t provide water certainty for our neighbors downstream that we ourselves don’t have,” she said.

Mitchell said she is still willing to negotiate a deal with the other basin states.

“I think we have to be honest with ourselves: Are we willing to get to a bad deal?” she said. “I am not.”

Bennet made the request in a Thursday morning letter to Sen. John Thune, the Republican majority leader, and Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader. It follows for the inspectors general of several federal agencies to investigate whether federal resources were used to target the state.

The request comes a week after attorneys for the state of Colorado disclosed a December email from a White House aide summoning officials from several agencies to discuss “immediate actions that your department or agency can take with respect to Colorado.” The email was then followed by funding cuts, the proposed closure of Boulder’s National Center for Atmospheric Research and the denial of disaster assistance funds.

Echoing allegations raised by attorneys for the state, who called the email a “smoking gun,” Bennet in his letter to Senate leadership accused the Trump administration of targeting the state because of Tina Peters’ then-continued incarceration. Attorneys for the state have also argued that Colorado had also drawn the president’s ire because of its mail-in balloting system and its laws limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

In court filings, the administration has argued that it’s not unusual for the federal government to “make decisions based on political or geographic considerations.” The White House has denied that Colorado officials’ refusal to release or transfer Peters played a part in the email or subsequent administrative decisions.

An ally of President Donald Trump, Peters was serving a prison sentence for her role in giving an unauthorized person access to secure voting equipment in Mesa County. Her sentence was commuted by Gov. Jared Polis in May, and she was released June 1.

Bennet said that presidential administrations were entitled to advance their political priorities but that they couldn’t “dictate terms to states.” Three constitutional law professors told The Denver Post last week that the email — and the coordinated effort it appeared to reveal — was unprecedented and likely illegal. One also warned about a permanent rupture of trust between state and federal authorities, an argument that Bennet also stressed.

“Allowing this unconstitutional overreach to go unchallenged sets a dangerous precedent, and unsettles the relationship between states and the federal government,” Bennet wrote. “No state should ever be subject to punitive measures for decisions that simply happen to go against a sitting president’s desires — and no American should be denied relief from floods and wildfires, or see their opportunity for clean water ripped away, simply because they happen to live in a state at odds with a given administration.”

Emails sent to Thune and Schumer’s offices were not immediately returned Thursday morning.

The December email, first reported last week by The Post, was read aloud in federal court on Aug. 11, and a copy was released in federal filings Wednesday.

Under the subject line “brainstorm call,” the email was sent by a Trump assistant to 14 federal officials and White House aides. The recipients included the chiefs of staff for the departments of energy, education, transportation, interior and agriculture. A deputy secretary for the Department of Housing and Urban Development was also included, as was a White House lawyer and an associate director for the Office of Management and Budget.

Federal action against Colorado rolled out quickly after the brainstorm session. The next day, the Energy Department’s deputy general counsel summoned several people to a “portfolio review” meeting requested by the White House, according to additional records filed in federal court. Several emails withheld by the Justice Department, but described in a log turned over to the state, involved Energy Department staff discussing the portfolio review and “potential termination” of grants to Colorado in the days after the email.

Officials from within the U.S. Department of Agriculture swapped similar emails soon after the White House meeting. The log shows senior agency officials emailing each other about a new pilot program, which would have required Colorado to swiftly recertify Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program eligibility for 100,000 recipients. Some emails also included Emily Underwood, an assistant to Trump and the author of the initial “brainstorm” email.

“When water is in short supply, trees shut down and prepare for the winter season on an accelerated timeline,” said Barbara Demmig-Adams, a University of Colorado professor and an expert on leaf pigments. “They drop their leaves early, with leaf edges turning brown especially quickly.”

The experts at the Colorado Parks and Wildlife department who monitor foliage that wildlife eat are already seeing this happen, said spokesperson Bridget O’Rourke.

“Because of the wildfires and the drought, animals are dealing with limited habitat. Things just started drying up,” O’Rourke said. “That means the leaves, when it comes for their final beautiful breath before they die, there’s not as many leaves out there that are actually going to be changing colors. They’re just going to be drying up and falling.”

O’Rourke said she expects trees in Colorado’s alpine terrain to start changing by mid-September and be completely done by mid-October, depending on the region. When the aspens hit peak, they will be bright gold for a shorter period of time, she said.

In the summer, trees’ leaves are green because of the chlorophyll they use to collect and process nutrients via photosynthesis. Chlorophyll contains nitrogen, which trees transfer and store in their roots in the fall before dropping their leaves. The removal of chlorophyll allows carotenoid, or yellow, pigments to show right before the leaves die, said Demmig-Adams.

Last winter’s record-low snowpack and the subsequent drought will hasten that process not only at high elevations, but also lower ones, Demmig-Adams added. That includes in Denver where the oaks and maples usually turn later in the fall.

Fall colors: Here’s the science behind the reds, golds and oranges

As of Aug. 11, was experiencing some level of drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. About 14% was listed as experiencing “exceptional drought” — the highest level — including mountainous areas such as all of Eagle County, Pitkin County, and Lake County.

If all this sounds familiar, that's because Colorado was in a similar, though less severe, situation last summer when about 70% of the state was experiencing drought, per U.S. Drought Monitor. Compare that to 2023, described by one local expert as a “banner year” for leaf-peeping when just 28% of the state was in drought, and it����ap easy to see the correlation between moisture and fall colors.

That doesn't mean it won't be worth getting out there to enjoy the changing of seasons. In fact, there are a whole host of scenic drives and hikes we'd recommend. Heck, take some PTO and you could chart an entire road trip inspired by leaf-peeping.

Those looking for guidance on when the foliage will peak can use 2025 as a loose reference, accounting for the fact that drought is worse this year.

Mountains in the northern part of the state often peak first; last year, the expected peak was around Sept. 20. Colors in the central mountains — Summit County, Eagle County and the Interstate 70 corridor — popped off around the last weekend of September, while the southern mountains peaked in early October.

As the color change gets underway, locals can also follow the for real-time updates. If you plan to visit a state park, O'Rourke recommends calling ahead of time to ask a ranger for status updates.

Trees and bushes aren’t the only parts of nature that depend on water. Wildlife may also be extra protective around their natural resources this year, O’Rourke said. She cautioned leaf-peepers to be careful not to get too close to moose in wetlands or elk during the rut. Bears are also much more active this year, as the drought has diminished natural food sources.

“We, unfortunately, see elk and moose attacks every single fall. If it����ap going to be limited water resources, it����ap safe to say they’ll be even more sensitive this fall,” O’Rourke said.

Also, be sure to adhere to continued forest closures where wildfires took place this summer and check the appropriate U.S. Forest Service district website where you want to visit for the latest information.

Nearly the entire state is in some level of drought, according to , but the aridity is especially intense over the highly populated urban corridor and the mountains that are the source of much of Colorado’s water. The winter’s record-low snowpack translated into this summer’s anemic streamflows, moisture-sucking soil and drained reservoirs. Federal authorities describe the drought frying the Front Range with sobering words: severe, extreme, exceptional.

Despite widespread severe drought, 13 of the 25 largest cities and towns in Colorado have not implemented additional mandatory water use restrictions. The 13 communities — including the cities of Fort Collins, Pueblo and Boulder — are home to more than 1.5 million people, which is about a quarter of the state’s population. Water managers in many of the communities without additional drought restrictions have asked customers to voluntarily cut back water use, to varying degrees of success.

Individual water providers set drought restrictions depending on their own portfolio of water sources and reservoirs. Communities that draw from multiple water sources, own powerful water rights and maintain large reservoir systems are best poised to ride out drought.

“Every district and provider is different; they have different water rights and storage rights, so you’re going to see vast differences from community to community,” said John Thornhill, Windsor’s director of community development.

Those differences can be confusing to customers who see headlines about extreme drought, shrinking reservoirs, other cities’ mandatory restrictions and the imperiled Colorado River system, said Kim Hutton, Boulder’s water resources manager. Denver Water and Aurora Water — along with many towns across the Western Slope — have implemented mandatory drought rules to curb water use. Pueblo, meanwhile, has in place.

Boulder is and city leaders have asked customers to voluntarily conserve water and irrigate outdoors only twice a week. Hutton doesn’t expect to implement mandatory restrictions this year based on the amount of water they have stored.

“We’ve gotten questions from community members asking, ‘Why aren’t you doing more?’” Hutton said. “It����ap a hard message to say, ‘Well, we planned for this and we don’t need to do more.’”

Despite the planning, water managers are keeping a close eye on reservoir storage levels, water use and streamflows. One year of extreme drought can be withstood, managers said, but multiple years will test water supply systems.

“I do think it����ap important for all of us to recognize that this drought is not a normal drought year,” said Pieter Van Ry, Englewood’s director of utilities. “This is unique and something that hasn’t been seen in decades, if ever, in the modern era of water supply.”

Different portfolios, different stances

Several Front Range water managers who have not imposed mandatory drought restrictions thanked previous community leaders for planning for drought and growth.

Fort Collins from the Colorado River via the Colorado Big Thompson Project, the Cache la Poudre River and the Michigan River, which is part of the North Platte River basin.

“Our predecessors planned well,” said Katie Collins, water conservation specialist with Fort Collins Utilities. “Even in this hot and dry year, our supply is enough to meet demand.”

Colorado Springs Utilities leaders have not implemented additional drought restrictions this year, though their customers are , regardless of drought status. The state’s second-largest city draws 70% of its water from the Colorado River, 25% from the Arkansas River and 5% from the South Platte River.

The utility issued a water supply watch warning customers about drought impacts, but will not implement further restrictions until it has less than 1.5 years’ worth of water in its reservoirs, water conservation supervisor Julia Gallucci said. The city currently has 2.7 years’ worth of water in storage.

“Plan for the worst, hope for best,” Gallucci said. “We’re already planning that we might have to do something far more restrictive next year.”

Many Front Range communities draw large portions of their water from across the Continental Divide. Major cities like Denver, Colorado Springs and Fort Collins draw significant portions of their supply from the Colorado River, which winds from the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park to the Utah border near Grand Junction.

The lack of watering restrictions in some Front Range communities irked Andy Mueller, general manager of the , a taxpayer-funded agency that works to protect Western Slope water. Western Slope water users are working hard to conserve, he said, and farmers are fallowing fields because there is not enough to meet all the needs.

It’s difficult to know that some of that conserved water ends up on the other side of the Continental Divide watering lawns in towns without any mandatory restrictions, he said.

“Folks on the west side of the divide know we’re in a drought, they know we have conservation efforts in place and most people are doing their best to comply with that,” Mueller said. “Frankly, we’re not seeing that in the majority of the smaller cities on the Front Range.”

Even some Front Range water providers with powerful water rights are starting to feel the strain.

For months, Englewood was the only community in the southern Denver metro without mandatory water restrictions. Although the town of approximately 35,000 does not have much water stored in reservoirs, it owns some of the most senior water rights on the South Platte River, meaning they get first dibs, even when the flow is low.

“Typically our rights are so senior that even in dry years or a normal drought year they’re able to be fulfilled,” said utilities director Van Ry.

But this is not a normal drought year, he said, and even some of their most senior water rights are being curtailed for the first time in the town’s history.

Englewood’s city council on Monday will decide whether to impose mandatory watering restrictions, at . The restrictions will limit outdoor watering to two days a week.

There’s no record of the town ever imposing mandatory drought restrictions, Van Ry said.

“That����ap the piece we can control – the demand side. We can’t control whether it rains or whether it snows,” Van Ry said. “The more we can do, the better we’ll be if this persists.”

Variable conservation results

The voluntary conservation metrics implemented by many communities have seen varying levels of success.

Water use is 10% below the 5-year average in Erie, which .

“We trusted that our community would respond and they did,” said Todd Fessenden, the town’s utilities director.

In Fort Collins, water use is up slightly above average, Collins said. In Boulder, use is tracking just at or below the 5-year average, Hutton said. Colorado Springs’ water use is up about 7% over the five-year average, Gallucci said.

All three water managers said they would have expected use to be much higher than average during such a long, hot and dry summer.

Denver Water, the state’s largest water provider, said at the end of July that water use across its 1.5 million customers had dropped 5% below the five-year average under its mandatory twice-a-week watering restrictions. In Aurora, from last year under similar mandatory restrictions.

Water managers across the Front Range touted years of water conservation efforts aimed at reducing use across the board, regardless of drought status. Municipal water use across the entire state is dwarfed by agricultural use, which .

While water use is up in Windsor this year over last year, Thornhill said, per capita water use in the booming town of approximately 44,000 is down 20% since 2012. Much of that increased water use occurred during the unusually warm spring, when dry and hot weather made people begin watering weeks earlier than normal.

Water use in the town of approximately 40,000 has been higher this year than in 2025 and 2023 — relatively wet years that required less watering — but lower than the dry year of 2024.

While this year’s drought is manageable, water leaders said subsequent years of dryness will cause exponentially dire problems.

“You can usually ride out the first year pretty well; it����ap the second and third and fourth year that become a problem,” Thornhill said.

A key City Council member this week said she doesn’t support one of the remaining steps officials had hoped to take to finalize the deal for a new Denver Broncos stadium at Burnham Yard.

Councilwoman Jamie Torres, whose district encompasses both Burnham Yard and the Broncos’ current home at Empower Field at Mile High, told The Denver Post on Thursday that she had concerns about where Denver Water may relocate part of its operations as the team takes over most of the utility’s land at Burnham Yard.

Her views as the representative of both neighborhoods will carry significant weight on the 13-member council, which would have to vote to approve the deal.

“I don’t see a future for Lot M with the Denver Water use,” Torres said. “We are trying to figure out what alternatives exist.”

Lot M, a 5-acre parking lot in Sun Valley near Empower Field, has been pitched as a potential site for relocating Denver Water’s emergency response facility. The building needs a new home because it����ap currently located in the footprint of the proposed new stadium site at Burnham Yard.

If the city, Denver Water and the Broncos can’t reach an agreement on where the building should go, it could cause ripples throughout the rest of the complicated deal.

The Broncos announced Burnham Yard as the team’s “preferred site” for a new stadium last September. The team is aiming to open the new facility by 2031, which would require construction to start next spring.

Team owner Greg Penner this week said that the timeline is “not going to be easy” with all the work that still needs to be done. Denver Water’s relocation is one of the factors adding to that difficulty.

Denver Water, which provides water to 1.5 million people in the metro area, agreed last year to move its operations from Burnham Yard so that the Broncos can relocate, so long as its ratepayers aren’t stuck footing the bill. Most of the utility’s campus will move to a property in Denver’s Elyria-Swansea neighborhood, but the emergency facility must be centrally located to quickly respond to water line breaks and other urgent issues.

Lot M currently provides supplemental parking for season ticket holders at Empower Field. Neighbors of the site have pushed for years for the city and state to convert the area surrounding the lot into a pedestrian-friendly neighborhood without industrial facilities. Community members have fought hard against Denver Water’s plans there, calling the proposal a “significant step backward” in a letter to city officials.

Torres said that without the community’s support — or at least acceptance of the plan — the idea would have a tough time getting through the City Council process.

“It was such a strong reaction against it and it never really eased up with more information,” she said. “For me, that signals it isn’t really a workable solution.”

Denver Water CEO Alan Salazar is still holding out hope that the utility can use Lot M while mitigating the community’s concerns, he said during a Wednesday meeting of Denver Water’s Board of Commissioners.

“I still think… Lot M is the path of least resistance,” he said.

He added in a written statement: “Denver Water has leaned into supporting the relocation of a new Broncos stadium because we recognize the positive impact a new stadium could have for Denver. At the same time, the relocation and replication of our critical facilities is also important to the community.”

Alternatively, the city could donate a different public parcel for the site, or the team could purchase another plot of land for Denver Water.

“Lot M is just one piece of the puzzle and we are exploring multiple options in partnership with the community, Denver Water and the Broncos,” said Jon Ewing, a spokesman for the mayor’s office.

A Broncos representative declined to answer a question about whether the team would be willing to pay for the plot of land Denver Water needs.

“We understand the integral role Denver Water plays in serving our community and remain committed to supporting its relocation efforts and ongoing operations,” team spokesman Patrick Smyth said.

The Broncos have taken several steps recently to advance the team’s plans for Burnham Yard, including finalizing deals to purchase land from SRM Concrete and the Colorado Department of Transportation.