After abundant rain drenched many parts of Colorado last week, including Manitou Springs, the small town near the base of Pikes Peak is now facing a critical water supply emergency and is warning residents to cease all water use.
All nondrinking water use is prohibited, the city officials said Monday announcing the emergency order. The city warned residents that the city’s primary water source and reserves in its backup system have dropped at a faster rate than expected.
“As a result, strict participation and adherence to these emergency water restrictions are now required,” the city said. That means city residents must hold off on showers, irrigation, dishwashing and other commercial uses of water until the water supply is restored, which could be by the end of this week.
But why is there a water emergency after so much rain? Officials say it’s an issue of high turbidity, or extreme cloudiness of water, caused by sediment and other microorganisms that are affecting water quality and treatment operations.
Last week’s storm dumped several feet of snow across the Pikes Peak region, which then quickly started to melt in the high temperatures in the days that followed. The rapid snowmelt is causing increased runoff into the watershed and that runoff carries a lot of organic material and sediment that enters the Manitou Springs Water Treatment plant.
Manitou Springs gets most of its water from a stream called French Creek on Pikes Peak. But when those flows are insufficient or turbidity levels are too high, the city can get water from a federal water project called the Fryingpan-Arkansas Project, which was started in the 1960s to move water from the western side of the mountains to the eastern side, where it is drier.
The city accesses the water through the Fryingpan-Arkansas project in two ways — by a process called “exchange” where they can trade water rights to get the water they need into their storage and by piping it directly to them through a pipeline run by Colorado Springs Utilities.
The problem is the pipeline is temporarily out of service for emergency repairs, the city said. Repairs won’t be finished until the end of this week.
“Without access to this backup delivery method, proactive and complete conservation is the only way to maintain drinking water supply and safeguard system operations during this period of environmental stress,” the city said.
The city’s treated water, stored in finished water tanks, is safe to drink, but the amount of available treated water is critically low, officials said.
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