Plan For The Future
Today, Denver Water harvests 234,000 acre feet (289,000,000 m3) of water a year, which is about one-third of the state's treated water supply. Denver Water uses 2 percent of all water (treated and untreated) in Colorado (265,000 acre feet (327,000,000 m3) per year).
Denver Water also no longer relies on only one option – building new reservoirs – to ensure customers always have the water they need. Instead, it has a diverse plan to meet those future needs: conserve, recycle and develop.
Conserve Denver Water invests millions of dollars into conservation programs to encourage customers to reduce their use. The utility provides rebates to customers who buy water-efficient fixtures, conducts free audits of homes and business that use high amounts of water, provides incentive contracts for large-scale consumers to reduce their water consumption, enforces watering rules and spearheads an award-winning advertising campaign to encourage customers to Use Only What You Need. Customers today are using 18 percent less water than they were before the 2002 drought – and there are 10 percent more of them.
Recycle Recycled water from Denver Water's recycled water distribution system supplies industrial and irrigation customers with nonpotable water, thereby freeing up drinking water for other purposes and reducing trans-mountain diversions. Now, the recycled water system is freeing up enough drinking water to serve roughly 15,000 households; once it’s complete, the system will free up enough drinking water to serve almost 45,000 homes. There are more than a dozen wastewater recycling programs in Colorado, and Denver Water operates the largest recycled water system in Colorado.
Develop Denver Water has begun plans to expand Gross Reservoir, which would allow the utility to supply customers with an additional 18,000 acre feet (22,000,000 m3) of water each year – the amount of water used by roughly 45,000 homes. Denver Water also is turning gravel pits to water storage sites, which allows it to store and release reusable water to meet downstream water requirements.
Read more about this topic: Denver Water
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