Protecting the Environment


Fountain Creek

Improving and Protecting Fountain Creek

Colorado Springs has acted aggressively in recent years to resolve past problems with Fountain Creek. SDS-related mitigation and the creation of the new Fountain Creek Flood Control and Greenway District to oversee improvements to the creek promise to bring even more enhancements.

In the mid 1990s, Colorado Springs Utilities spent more than $40 million to upgrade our wastewater treatment plant. And since 2000, we’ve spent more than $100 million upgrading our wastewater collection system. The net result: The water we put into Fountain Creek today is cleaner than the water already there for most constituents. And we’re not done. By 2025, we will have invested $250 million over 20 years in our wastewater collection system.

Colorado Springs has also made big investments to control wastewater spills that could affect the creek. We’re the only utility in Colorado and one of the few in the country that has a wastewater spill-recovery program that protects the environment in the event of an accidental wastewater spill and prevents it from reaching downstream neighbors. In 2007, we spent $10 million on a wastewater spill-recovery project on Fountain Creek. As a result of these efforts, wastewater spills per miles of pipe in our system are among the lowest in the country.

And we will be able to contain the vast majority of the few wastewater spills that do occur.

Additionally, the City of Colorado Springs is investing $17 million annually from the Storm Water Enterprise, inaugurated in 2006, to further reduce flooding severity, reduce stream erosion and sedimentation and improve water quality.


State-of-the-art treatment facilities help ensure that we treat the water we use to a high standard – meeting and often exceeding state and federal regulations – before returning it to Fountain Creek.

Regional Cooperation

Meaningful, long-term solutions for the Fountain Creek Watershed will come from continued regional cooperation. By working together on regional solutions, we’ll turn our waterways into amenities we can all be proud of and enjoy. Colorado Springs Utilities has made a major investment in staff time, expertise and funding on the following programs to improve the creek:

• The Fountain Creek Vision Task Force is studying strategies for addressing issues related to improving Fountain Creek. One early benefit has been to bring concerned parties from communities throughout the watershed together to work on coordinated solutions – something that didn’t happen in the past. Colorado Springs supports the creation of a regionwide watershed entity to further the strategies of the Vision Task Force.
• The Fountain Creek Foundation was formed by several individuals committed to the watershed to attract private funding for outreach and educational purposes. But that entity alone won’t shoulder the entire burden of funding and implementing the goals of the Vision Task Force. For that reason, Colorado Springs supports the Vision Task Force’s goal to form a regional organization to improve the Fountain Creek watershed.
• The Fountain Creek Corridor Master Plan is a joint $600,000 project of Colorado Springs Utilities and the Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District (LAVWCD) to develop a master plan that will turn Fountain Creek into a showcase park and recreational amenity. The master plan, to be unveiled in Fall 2008, will provide a blueprint to improve the health of the watershed, create ecosystems that support native wildlife and plants, sustain productive agricultural lands and lay out a trail between Colorado Springs and Pueblo with recreational, educational and tourism opportunities.
• The Fountain Creek Watershed Plan Technical Advisory Committee is composed of technical representatives from the cities and counties along the Fountain Creek Watershed, including Colorado Springs. The group reviews and provides input on technical issues.