Denver Water serves 1.4 million people in the City and County of

Denver, Colorado Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...

, and a portion of its surrounding suburbs. Established in 1918, the utility is a

public agency In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...

funded by water rates and new tap fees, not taxes. It is Colorado's oldest and largest water utility.

Overview

Denver Water's primary water sources are the

South Platte River The South Platte River is one of the two principal tributaries of the Platte River. Flowing through the U.S. states of Colorado and Nebraska, it is itself a major river of the American Midwest and the American Southwest/Mountain West. It ...

, Blue River, Williams Fork and

Fraser River The Fraser River is the longest river within British Columbia, Canada, rising at Fraser Pass near Blackrock Mountain in the Rocky Mountains and flowing for , into the Strait of Georgia just south of the City of Vancouver. The river's annual ...

watersheds, but it also uses water from the South Boulder Creek, Ralston Creek and Bear Creek watersheds.

History

The first residents of the Denver area drank water directly from the creek and river. Surface wells and buckets of water sufficed for a while as a delivery system, but they soon proved inadequate. Irrigation ditches were the next step forward. In 1870, when the rapidly growing community had a population of almost 5,000, the Denver City Water Company was formed. In 1872, with a large well, a steam pump and four miles (6 km) of mains, Denver City Water Company began to provide water to homes. Over the next two decades, 10 water companies fought, collapsed or merged. Several companies merged, and in 1894, the Denver Union Water Company—predecessor of Denver Water—emerged to establish a stable system. In 1918, Denver residents voted to form a five-member Board of Water Commissioners and buy the Denver Union Water Company's water system for $14 million, creating Denver Water. From that time on, Denver Water planned and developed a system to meet the needs of the people of Denver and the surrounding areas. Flash floods between 1996 and 2002 led to erosion and damage to Denver's reservoirs. This erosion were exacerbated by the insects and disease in the 1990s that had weakened forests. To address this, Denver Water began replanting mountainsides with drought-resistant trees in order to better maintain its waterways.

Lead service pipes

Lead pipes were used to hook homes to water mains until the World War II era; they were banned in 1971. "Utility spokesman Travis Thompson said Denver Water’s service area was left with between 64,000 and 84,000 homes with lead service lines." A $500 million program to replace them is proceeding as of 2021 at the rate of about 5,000 homes a year. Whether a particular address has a lead service line may be searched for o
a page on the Denver Water website

References

{{Reflist, 30em

External links

Official website
Denver metropolitan area Government of Denver Water companies of the United States

Overview

History

Lead service pipes

See also

References

External links