Conserve Our Precious Water Supply

High up in the watershed, we enjoy relatively clean water and plentiful supply. But what we do here affects many people downstream. The Roaring Fork River contributes 10% of the Colorado River system, which supplies more than 40 million people with drinking water and irrigation for 6 million acres of land used to produce food.

The volume of the annual snowpack and the timing of its melt in spring and summer are critical to water supplies for both human and natural communities. Forest health is a factor—healthy forests shade the snowpack and help slow its melt while dead forests (killed by beetles, wildfire, and drought—all exacerbated by the warming climate) allow the snowpack to melt faster, reducing streamflows throughout the rest of the year.

By conserving our precious water supply as we go, we ensure that we have enough supply to get us through the drier years.