[HollyMutual-Announce] Water this summer

[Holly Mutual Water Company]

All:

As you are aware, this winter has been warm and dry, and this follows a low precipitation year in 2025. Denver Water has reported their snow pack measurements are near an all-time record low. Thus they have implemented Stage 1 watering restrictions, which limit irrigation to two days per week between the hours of 6:00 pm and 10:00 am. In the past Denver Water has also sometimes raised their water rates significantly for large water usage and instituted more drastic usage policies.

While Holly Mutual water does not depend directly on the spring runoff, we anticipate higher demand this year because of that. We are still recovering from the Whitehall Well pit flood in summer 2023, which required us to rebuild its infrastructure nearly from scratch. During that time the Piedmont well was forced to bear our entire water distribution load, until the Whitehall Well came fully back online late last summer. Unfortunately this caused the Piedmont pumping capacity to drop by 70%, which forced us to idle it down a couple of months early last year to provide it more time to recover over the winter.

Colorado Water Well (CWW) is in the process of spinning up both wells for a projected April 16 water distribution start. In particular they are measuring the water depths and pumping capacities of the wells and will advise us as to what we can expect this year. The aquifer from which Holly Mutual draws water has been in the process of being depleted every year for decades, and this now places hard physical limits on how much water our wells can pump. Every year we have to lower our pumps a bit further, and that decreases the rate at which they pump water.

In 2003 our well pumps were replaced with custom units designed to extract as much water as possible, within the constraints of the well bore diameters. We established our current watering schedule at that time, which allows only two designated watering nights per household. We don't meter water, and thus we depend on the honor system when it comes to enforcement. If everyone adheres to the schedule, we all should get water. However it only takes a couple of properties overusing the system to cause it to collapse, in which case no one gets any water. We are running on a knife-edge.

Once CWW provides the numbers and their recommendations, we could have difficult decisions to make regarding this year's irrigation schedule. My plan is to retain the two days per week irrigation assignments we've used for the past 25 years. The question will be: how many hours we can provide water per night? I will write again when I have better insight.

Cheers,
Mark Derbyshire

President, Holly Mutual Water Company