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Kevin Gertig, Water Resources and Treatment Operations Manager for the City of Fort Collins

If you have lived in other parts of the country, the thing you might notice is how pure Northern Colorado’s water is, comparatively. No smell, no coloration. Basically, if you live on Colorado’s front range, you drink melted snow.

“From snow to your glass can be as little as 48 to 72 hours,” says Kevin Gertig, Water Resources and Treatment Operations Manager for Fort Collins.

He continues: “We’re lucky to have such high quality source water. All folks have to do to see the difference is hop on a plane.” Gertig explains that Fort Collins water begins as snow at the top of Cameron Pass and flows down the watershed into the Cache la Poudre River (CLP), where some of it is stored in Horsetooth Reservoir.

The story is the same for surrounding communities, Loveland and Greeley. Snow melt starts in Rocky Mountain National Park, then makes its way down several square miles of surface drainage, collecting and dissolving organic matter along the way.

Loveland water is drawn from the Colorado River and the Big Thompson as well as the Green Ridge Glade Reservoir, according to Loveland Source Water Engineer, Greg Dewey.

Greeley residents drink surface water from four river basins: the Upper Colorado River, CLP, the Big Thompson and Laramie River Basin. All three communities blend water from area rivers and reservoirs. The blend varies, depending on the time of year and volume of runoff.

Jon Monson, Water and Sewer Director for the City of Greeley, says, “Here, we are fortunate. We don’t have that much industry upstream. The CLP, as an example, does not have a lot of old mines and there is not much development,” which ensures cleaner water.

John McGee, Water Treatment Manager for Loveland, adds, “There is an advantage to being so far up in the water chain. We don’t have many other discharges in our supply. Here [in Loveland] the only municipality upstream is Estes Park.”

This water, coincidentally, is part of the reason for the area’s microbrew beer boom. New Belgium Brewing Co., Odell Brewing Co. and others cite excellent water sources as one reason for this successful local industry.

Treatment

From the rivers, the water flows into the public treatment plants. All processes vary slightly, however the technology of filtration hasn’t changed much in the last century.

Water starts in a big basin where alum, a coagulant aid, is added to the water to help make any suspended particles “sticky” so they will attract soil, bacteria, algae, microorganisms and any other particulates (like fish poop!). The clumps, called floc, will sink to the bottom of another basin where they are drawn off and eventually end up in the sludge ponds.

The clear water is filtered again through several layers of sand, gravel and charcoal. Then, by order from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the filtered water is disinfected with chlorine. Voters of Fort Collins, Greeley and Loveland have all approved the use of fluoride, which is also added at this point.

From treatment plants, thousands of gallons of water course through city water pipes, which get increasingly smaller until they reach your house. Each day Northern Colorado households use an average of 150 to 200 gallons of water (with wide seasonal variation). Gertig says their future household goal, after more conservation education, will be 140 gallons per day.

Consumer Confidence Reports

The Safe Drinking Water Act is the main federal law that ensures the quality of U.S. drinking water. Under the act, the EPA sets standards for water quality and requires each municipality to publish the results of annual testing in a consumer confidence report, which citizens generally receive in their utility bill or can find on the city website.

Fort Collins, Loveland and Greeley all exceed EPA standards by a large margin. “Our mission is to provide pure plentiful water – we take it very seriously,” says Monson. The same passion for excellence and dedication to public safety was evident in all the water experts interviewed for this story.

U.S. water supplies are federally required to undergo rigorous testing. Tens of thousands of tests are performed throughout the year to ensure exceptionally good water.

Drop the Bottle

Shirley Perryman, MS, RD at CSU’s Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition was asked “Is bottled water better for you than tap?” Her simple answer was, “No.” She continued: “Bottled water is not fluoridated which is important for healthy teeth —especially for growing children. Tap water is greener since it doesn’t contribute plastic to the landfill. Some bottled water may contain contaminants. Local water providers offer water quality reports. Bottled water companies are not required to provide such reports to consumers.”

EPA standards for water quality are much more stringent than the FDA’s, under which the bottled water industry operates.

Cost can be factored in as well: A liter of water is typically $1.50. A gallon of tap water, delivered to your house, costs under a penny. For Loveland residents, the cost is way under that at $.0004 per gallon, according to John McGee.

How About Filters?

Most commercially available water filters (like Britta® and Pur) remove little more than chlorine. However, the same result can be achieved by leaving an open container of water on the counter for 30 minutes, where the chlorine will dissipate out.

Ruth Hecker, Loveland Water Quality Lab Coordinator, disapproves of their use. “If you don’t use filters correctly, replacing exactly according to the manufacturer’s instructions, you can be setting up a bacteria motel. You can do much more harm than good.”

Overall, Northern Colorado water is amazing. It’s cold, it’s clean, it’s fresh and it’s incredibly inexpensive. The teams of water engineers and scientists in our communities are working hard to ensure that it stays that way. So drink up!

Bottled vs. Tap - Did you know?

• Bottled water costs up to 10,000 times more than tap water.
• Global consumption of bottled water went up by 57 percent between 1999 and 2004 when it reached 41 billion gallons.
• Americans lead the world in consumption of bottled water at 6.8 billion gallons per year, or one glass a day per person.
• Nearly a quarter of all bottled water crosses national borders to reach consumers, transported by boat, train and truck.
• Bottles for water sold in America are made from more than 17 million barrels of oil annually - enough to fuel more than 1 million U.S. cars for a year.
• 86 percent of plastic water bottles used in the United States become garbage or litter.
• Buried water bottles can take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade in landfills.
• Almost 40 percent of the PET bottles that were deposited for recycling in the United States in 2004 were actually exported, sometimes to as far away as China.