Due to a snow drought and a record-setting heat wave, some Colorado residents are facing the first restrictions on their water use ever.
Denver Water announced Wednesday that it wants to cut water use by 20%, asking people to turn off automatic irrigation systems until mid-May and to limit watering trees and shrubs twice a week.
“The situation is serious,” said Todd Hartman, a union spokesman. We are in such a desperate situation that we can come back to the community in two or three months and say you are booked one day a week.
It’s the first time in a year that Denver Water has issued a ban, Hartman said.
Snowfall in Colorado hit record lows on March 12 — about a month earlier than normal — and collapsed during a recent heat wave that has baked nearly every state in the West.
“We already had the lowest snowpack we’ve seen since at least 1981, and now, with the heat wave conditions, we’ve lost about 40% of the statewide snowpack” since the March 12 peak, said Peter Goble, Colorado’s assistant meteorologist. “The situation looks like late April or early May.”
The water restrictions are a sign of things to come in many Western countries as authorities try to deal with the problems of widespread drought. Nearly every snow zone in the Mountain West had its warmest winter on record and is behind schedule when it comes to water supplies, according to the US drought assessment. A decrease in snowfall could create a risk of severe wildfires, disrupt the supply of electricity to hydroelectric dams and force farmers to withhold water.
Hartman said nearly every community east of the Rockies, near the front line of Colorado, is in the same boat as Denver.
Aurora City Council members are considering similar water restrictions; existing pools stand at about 58%, according to the city’s website. In the city of Erie, officials declared a water emergency on March 20 after experiencing a surge in water usage.
City spokeswoman Gabi Rae said Erie was close to turning off the faucets because many residents had started watering their lawns before the uncontrollable heat.
He said: “We were about to run out of water in a day.
Erie officials ordered residents to stop using irrigation systems altogether.
Goble said this month’s heat wave has set records for every state in Colorado, sometimes by double digits.
“I don’t remember seeing one heat wave that broke so many records, and to see it across a large part of the state is really amazing,” he said, adding: “I’m located in Fort Collins, and last Saturday we went up to 91. The previous record for March was 81, so we broke that record. And it wasn’t just one day.”
Denver Water, which serves about 1.5 million residents in the city and its suburbs, gets about half of its water from the Upper Colorado River Basin and the South Platte River Basin. The final snowpack was about 42% of normal Tuesday, the utility reported. The Upper Colorado River Watershed was 55%.
In general, Denver Water’s reservoirs are about 80% full, which is only 5 percent lower than a normal year.
“That sounds good,” Hartman said. “Except what we can’t count on is the speed of the water that will restore the dams, because the snow is too low.”
In other words, the snowpack – a natural reservoir of water – is usually already loaded and will not fill the reservoirs until later in the spring and summer, when runoff often rises.
In Erie, city officials plan to aggressively police water use through next week using smart meters that monitor residential use. Rae said the city is also sending crews to patrol neighborhoods and look for sprinklers that are turned on.
Rae said: “People have been upset by how aggressive we were, and I don’t think they understand the consequences if we didn’t. It’s a serious emergency. We were close to empty, there would be no water from the taps – hospitals, schools, fire hydrants, your home would not have water.”
Although outdoor watering restrictions will soon be lifted, Rae expects more restrictions later this spring and summer.
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