The sprawling lawn in front of the state Capitol is baking under the sun and the shimmering summer heat.The grass is blotchy brown with a few weeds seizing the moment to invade the non-native turf on their quest to return the semi-arid land to its natural state — sagebrush and thistles.
It’s also sending a message to Denver Water customers: Wake up, fools, this is what drought looks like.
Kirk Klancke, president of the Colorado Headwaters Chapter of Trout Unlimited, applauds the effort, hoping it sparks a durable water conservation movement. He would like to put a sign in front of the statehouse heralding the Capitol lawn crew as “Colorado River Champions.”
Nobody loves a dormant lawn quite as much as my friend, Kirk. He considers it a sign of enlightenment, evidence that Denver folks are intelligent enough to understand the precarious source of the water coming out of their taps.
“Every time someone turns a sprinkler on in Denver, a river drops on the West Slope,” he said. And this year, the situation is critical.
Stream temperatures have routinely hit 75 degrees due to high temperatures and extreme low flows as Denver Water pumps more through the maze of tunnels and pipes that deliver water to urban taps. Warm water enables oxygen to escape rapidly. The streams die. The trout suffocate.
The economy on the West Slope is suffocating, too.
Fishing and rafting contribute about $2.5 billion to the state annually. This year, many streams have been closed to fishing for days at a time or all but a few hours each day due to the high temperatures. Rafting outfitters also report that 2026 has been a miserable season.
Everywhere you look, the signs of extreme drought are evident on the Western Slope.
Hillsides are brown. Dust devils whirl in the air.
The little spring-fed pool in Klancke’s yard in Fraser has dried up for the first time in 28 years. That means ground water is disappearing along with the stream flows. It’s not the least bit normal.
It’s an emergency.
Klancke has been monitoring water use in Denver for decades. He is the former manager of the Winter Park Ranch Water and Sanitation District and for years was involved in negotiations with Denver Water to maintain healthy stream flows in Grand County.
He unabashedly contends that Denver lawns should always be brown in August.
Kentucky Bluegrass belongs in Kentucky, he said, where average rainfall is 38 to 58 inches per year. Denver gets about 15 inches in an average year. So far, this year it has received 4 to 7 inches of rain, depending on the neighborhood. About 60% of water use in Denver is wasted growing a purely
decorative crop ill-suited for this climate.
A green lawn in Denver in August is idiotic.
So, if you don’t want a brown lawn in August, Klancke said, plant something else. Don’t pretend your profligate water use doesn’t matter.
My pals at Denver Water are a bit more tolerant of their customers’ magical thinking about their manicured green landscapes.
At least they were before Aug. 1.
The utility had not required mandatory water restrictions for 13 years, Greg Fisher, manager of demand planning, explained, so it’s not surprising customers didn’t respond immediately. “It takes them a while to understand the rules.”
The organization “leaned hard” into education during the first half of the summer, he said. They sent customers materials to explain the rules and tips for saving water. The goal was to reduce water consumption by 20% from the five-year average.
Depending on how you calculate the five-year average and other factors, customers cut use by 2% or 5% or, well, you get the point, not enough.
“This summer has been extremely hot and dry,” Fisher said, so it’s not comparable to conditions in the past five years. “It’s a real challenge this year.”
But patience with water scofflaws in Denver is running out on both sides of the divide. Denver Water tried doing this the easy way. Clearly it didn’t work.
Reports of flagrant water waste are being filed on the Denver Water website, generating an escalating set of consequences from warnings to fines. Customers who repeatedly break the rules will be fined from $250 to $1,000 per violation. (Remember, your neighbors are watching.)
“We’re trying to hold those customers accountable,” Fisher said. “It’s only fair.”
As of last week, only three fines had been levied, “but several more are in the works,” he insisted. The customers are getting better about water conservation. They are learning how to handle it. It just takes time.
Klancke also has long advocated for education so that water customers might understand the connection between their taps and the threat to the state’s vital water sources. He was instrumental in bringing Headwaters River Journey, an interactive center explaining the importance of the Colorado River system, to Winter Park.
He’s famous for his speeches saying that litigation is too expensive and legislation is too slow, so education is our best hope.
But this summer has undermined his belief that Denver Water customers are teachable. They obviously don’t get it.
“The lawns in Denver are still green,” he said.
And what good are mandatory water restrictions if most people don’t pay any attention to them and nothing happens?
“The health of the whole environment on the West Slope is crippled” by the extravagant water use on the Front Range, Klancke said. “Either enforce the restrictions or go to drought pricing. It’s that simple.”
Fisher reluctantly agrees. “I’ve been with Denver Water for 30 years and I’ve never seen stream flows this low.”
The day of reckoning is here.
And for water-wasters, there’s no place to hide. Just look for the green lawns.
Diane Carman is a Denver communications consultant.
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