Denver Water — From Forests to Faucets Watershed Protection Partnership (USA)

Denver Water, the utility supplying roughly 1.5 million people in the Denver, Colorado area, draws most of its water from forested mountain watersheds in the South Platte and Colorado River basins. After the 1996 Buffalo Creek Fire and 2002 Hayman Fire (which together burned roughly 150,000 acres) sent ash and sediment into the Strontia Springs and Cheesman reservoirs, Denver Water launched the From Forests to Faucets partnership in 2010 with the U.S. Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Region, the Colorado State Forest Service and the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

The partnership aims to proactively reduce wildfire and erosion risk across Denver Water's critical watersheds, avoiding the repeated cost of post-fire sediment removal and water treatment that followed the 1996 and 2002 fires.

Partners fund forest thinning, prescribed burns and reforestation across the utility's watersheds. Under the 2017-2021 phase, Denver Water contributed $16.5 million, matched by $16.5 million from federal and state partners, for a combined $33 million.

Post-fire sediment removal and infrastructure repair after the 1996 and 2002 fires cost more than $27 million. Across the programme's life from 2010 through work planned into 2027, partners have invested nearly $96 million, treated more than 120,000 acres (about two-thirds of it in the South Platte Basin), and planted over 1.4 million trees in burned areas. The Colorado Forest Restoration Institute at Colorado State University has independently evaluated thousands of acres of the fuel-reduction treatments, providing field-based verification rather than relying solely on self-reporting.