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 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 e comments from area residents also included disapproval of transgender people.

But the discussion about approving the funding became overtaken by a debate over whether Castle Rock Pride — a nonpro t that aims to build a supportive community in Douglas County for LGBTQ+ residents — should receive part of the money.

One resident, talking about gender changes, said “this is satanic evil” and criticized the county commissioners for considering supporting Castle Rock Pride.

“You cannot recreate what God created,” the resident said at the July 25 commissioners meeting.

Groups at higher risk

Across Colorado, nearly 800 people died by suicide in 2004, and that one-year total reached almost 1,300 in 2022, according to state data cited by Douglas County sta .

In Douglas County, the number of suicide deaths went from a recent low of 15 in 2005 to dozens higher in years afterward.

Last year, 53 people died by suicide in Douglas County, according to the state data.

But suicide risk is a direr problem for certain demographics, and that includes LGBTQ+ youth, who are far

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