{"id":564911,"date":"2026-03-27T18:49:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T18:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/564911\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T18:49:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T18:49:09","slug":"colorado-residents-face-earliest-water-restrictions-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/564911\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado residents face earliest water restrictions ever"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a result of a snow drought<\/a> and a heat wave<\/a> that have both set records<\/a>, some Colorado residents face the earliest restrictions on their water use ever imposed.<\/p>\n

Denver Water announced Wednesday that it is seeking a 20% cut in water use, asking people to turn off automatic watering systems until mid-May and restricting the watering of trees and shrubs to twice a week. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe situation is quite serious,\u201d said Todd Hartman, a spokesperson for the utility. \u201cWe\u2019re in such a dire situation that we could be coming back to the public in two or three months and saying you\u2019re limited to one day a week.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is the earliest in the year that Denver Water has ever issued a restriction, Hartman said. <\/p>\n

Colorado\u2019s snowpack peaked at extremely low levels on March 12 \u2014 nearly a month earlier than usual \u2014 then cratered during the recent heat wave that cooked nearly every state in the West.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe already had the lowest snowpack we\u2019ve seen since at least 1981, and now, with the heat wave conditions, we\u2019ve already lost about 40% of the statewide snowpack\u201d since the March 12 peak, said Peter Goble, Colorado\u2019s assistant state climatologist. \u201cConditions are looking more like late April or early May.\u201d <\/p>\n

The water restrictions are a harbinger of what\u2019s to come in many Western states as officials try to manage widespread drought concerns. Nearly every snow basin in the Mountain West had one of its warmest winters on record and is well behind normal when it comes to water supply, according to the U.S. drought monitor<\/a>. The dwindling snowpack is likely to raise the risk of severe wildfires, hamper electricity generation at hydropower dams and force water restrictions for farmers. <\/p>\n

Hartman said nearly every community east of the Rockies, along Colorado\u2019s front range, is in much the same boat as Denver. <\/p>\n

City Council members in Aurora are considering similar water restrictions; reservoirs there stand at about 58%, according to the city\u2019s website<\/a>. In the town of Erie, officials declared a water shortage emergency on March 20 after they observed a massive spike in consumption.<\/p>\n

Gabi Rae, a spokesperson for the town, said Erie was perilously close to having taps run dry because so many residents had started watering their lawns early amid the unseasonable heat. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe were a day away from running out of water. That\u2019s why it was such an emergency,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Erie officials demanded that residents stop using irrigation systems<\/a> altogether.<\/p>\n

Goble said this month\u2019s heat wave has set records in every corner of Colorado, sometimes by double digits. <\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t remember seeing a single heat wave that broke this many records, and seeing it across such a large portion of the country is certainly eye-popping,\u201d he said, adding: \u201cI\u2019m located in Fort Collins, and we got up to 91 last Saturday. The previous record for March was 81, so we smashed that record. And it wasn\u2019t just one day, either.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ThreeSkiers at Breckenridge Ski Resort as temperatures reached into the 50s this month. Michael Ciaglo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

Denver Water, which serves about 1.5 million residents in the city and its surrounding suburbs, gets about half of its water from the Upper Colorado River Basin and the South Platte River Basin. The latter\u2019s snowpack was at about 42% of normal Tuesday, the utility reported. The Upper Colorado River Watershed was at 55%. <\/p>\n

Systemwide, Denver Water\u2019s reservoirs are about 80% full, which is only about 5 percentage points lower than in a typical year. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat sounds pretty good,\u201d Hartman said. \u201cExcept that what we\u2019re not going to be able to rely on is that rush of water that will bring those reservoirs back up, because the snowpack is so low.\u201d <\/p>\n

In other words, the snowpack \u2014 a natural water reservoir \u2014 is mostly tapped already and won\u2019t replenish reservoirs later this spring and into summer, when runoff usually peaks. <\/p>\n

In Erie, city workers plan to aggressively police water use until sometime next week using smart meters that monitor residential usage. Rae said the city is also sending utility workers to patrol neighborhoods and look for sprinklers that are turned on. <\/p>\n

\u201cPeople have been kind of annoyed with how aggressive we were, and I don\u2019t necessarily think they understand the ramifications if we weren\u2019t,\u201d Rae said. \u201cIt is an actual serious emergency situation. We were so close to reaching empty, there would literally be no water coming out of the taps \u2014 hospitals, schools, fire hydrants, your home would have no water.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the limits on outdoor watering will be lifted soon, Rae expects more restrictions later this spring and summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a result of a snow drought and a heat wave that have both set records, some Colorado…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":564912,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-564911","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=564911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/564912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}