Thanks to the wisdom and will of our parents and grandparents, Colorado Springs has a strong track record of stepping up to meet the community’s need for clean, reliable water. The city we know today couldn’t exist without it.

Today, 70 percent of the water we drink and use comes from the other side of the Rockies. As the only large, Front Range city not located near a major river, getting water here is no easy task.

Water History
Until the 1950s, when Colorado Springs had a population of 50,000 – one eighth of what it is today – we relied entirely on water from this side of the Rockies.

The 1953 Blue River Project marked the Springs’ first venture into transmountain water diversion. Our next big transmountain project, Homestake, was completed in 1967. Because of its size and cost, Homestake brought a doubling of Colorado Springs water rates – and the investment has proven to be an extremely good one. Nearly a decade later we began receiving water from the massive Fryingpan-Arkansas Project, built by the Federal Bureau of Reclamation. And completion of the Fountain Valley Conduit in 1985 enabled us to move water from Pueblo Reservoir via a pipeline to Colorado Springs.

The 1996 Water Resource Plan outlined our water needs over the next 40 years including SDS, which will be required around 2012 to bring needed water to Colorado Springs and our regional partners.

Now it’s our turn to do what our parents and grandparents did. Investing in SDS ensures we’ll have enough water to meet our own needs and those of our children and grandchildren.