From peaks to pints, where your water comes from in Highlands Ranch

BY HALEY LENA HLENA@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

From the tops of mountain peaks to the beer in your local brewery, Centennial Water and Sanitation Districts’ interns Erica Klein and Julie Sandberg and Hunter Beckett showcased their educational program about where water comes from at Living the Dream Brewing.

While nine billion gallons of water per day is used for residential outdoor water use in the U.S., according to Sandberg, the average annual total water use in Highlands Ranch is just over 4.4 billion gallons of water.

“A single family home is the biggest consumer of water,” said Sandberg. “ ey on average use about half an acre foot, which is roughly 163,000 gallons of water per year.”

An acre foot of water is nearly 325,900 gallons of water.

Types of water ere are two kinds of water, surface water and groundwater.

Surface water - which is considered to be a renewable resource - is water on the surface from areas like rivers, lakes, streams and reservoirs. When precipitation falls, it replenishes the rivers and lakes.

Groundwater is water below the surface and is generally considered a non-renewable water source as it can take a longer period of time to replenish.

“All the groundwater used by Centennial Water is not renewable,” said Sandberg, who is serving as a water intern this summer. “It’s something to think about when we are going

TIME HAS DEFINITELY CHANGED DOUGLAS COUNTY!

through our consumption.”

Groundwater is stored in aquifers, which is an underground layer of permeable rock, gravel and sand that naturally lters the water and helps remove unwanted substances.

Sandberg said another way to think about water usage is that nature drinks rst.

Plants and other life absorb the water rst and then the water will soak down into the pores of the earth and will sit in the aquifers.

Wells are used to extract groundwater. ere are 39 active groundwater wells across the community and supply an average of 15% of the district’s total water supply.

Centennial Water has two groundwater treatment plants where iron and manganese is removed with high pressured lters to help the water taste better.

“It acts like a piggy bank,” said Klein. “So if we have a year where we aren’t sure how much water we’re going to get or a dry year, we have that to fall back upon.” e district was also one of the rst in Colorado to use a process to assist with groundwater replenishment by recharging the groundwater, called Aquifer Storage and Recovery - ASR.

According to Klein, who is also a water intern, the district has injected 14,855 acre feet of water back into the aquifers since 1990 using the ASR and with the historic rainfall the community has seen this year, the district has injectedover 385 acre feet of water.

Water rights ere are seven di erent water court divisions for each of the major river basins in the state. ose who take water from a stream or underground aquifer and apply that water to a bene cial use must have water rights to legally do so.

Established in 1962, the State Water Court system helps manage and has administration over water decrees and oversees proper use.

According to Klein, two ways of having water rights processed are through junior and senior water rights.

WHERE CAN I GET THIS BOOK?

Stop by the HISTORY BOOTH in the Market Place at the Douglas County Fair & Rodeo on August 4, 5, & 6.

WHAT DO I DO IF I MISS THE FAIR?

The Annual Castle Rock Cra Show on November 4 and the Annual Mountain Pine Women’s Club Yultide Bazaar on November 11.

...also, you can always go to amazon.com!

Water rights can also be purchased as common water rights are used by municipalities, for irrigation, re protection, farming, recreation and more.

“It’s a very complicated system,” said Sandberg. “We wanted to give awareness of the water rights system of where your water comes from and how complicated it can be to get water for people.”

Centennial Water’s Supply is half owned and half leased.

A majority of leased water comes from the City of Englewood (70%). Leased water also comes from Denver Water, the WISE Project, the Center of Colorado and Castle Pines North.

Centennial Water owns about half of the water rights, which comes from various sources.

Nearly half of the owned water is part of the augmentation plan. is plan allows for the district to pick up the water from the river, retreat it and reuse it.

Chat eld Reservoir makes up 30% of the district’s owned water supply and the remaining comes from areas such as Plum Creek, Cline Ranch, South Platte River and South Platte Reservoir.

Two smaller rights the district has is Tarryall Creek and Michigan Creek which are both tributaries to the South Platte River - a junior right of the district.

Centennial Water infrastructure e district has access to water in four reservoirs. ese reservoirs include the James Tingle Reservoir, the Chat eld Reservoir and the McLellan Reservoir. e South Platte Reservoir was built by Centennial Water in 2006 and they own all 6,400 acre feet. e water is pumped to a occulation basin where a chemical called ferric sulfate is added, along with specialized polymers. ese particles and chemicals get mixed together, creating what it called ocs. e bottom of the occulation basin is continuously scrapped out and the resulting sludge gets sent to the Marcy Gulch Wastewater Treatment Plant where that water is sent back into the river. e clear water goes through a lter with carbon and ne sand.

Joseph B. Blake Water Treatment Plant where the water gets treated.

First, the di erent water sources get pumped to the forebay where larger debris such as branches, pebbles and trash settle out.

From there, the water goes to another basin where the ocs settle out, leaving clear water.

“ is removes those extra ne particles,” said Klein. “And when these lters clog, clean water is shot back through them to backwash the lters and that backwash water is also sent to Marcy Gulch Wastewater Treatment Plant.” e nal treatment step is disinfection where UV light is used to kill microbes in addition to the use of chlorine, which kills contaminants quickly at the initial disinfection and chloramine which helps protect the pipes through the disinfection system.

“We have to make sure we have enough chloramine in our system to protect the water after it is sent out of our plant,” said Klein.

Pumps send the water to the six storage tanks in Highlands Ranch, which then ows to homes, businesses or breweries in the Highlands Ranch or Solstice area.