
Denver Water’s Teacher Resource Packet illustrates the three Rs of water conservation.
Last week’s Youth Education blog post, Youth and water – following a water drop, focused on the movement of water through the water cycle. Now that you understand the journey of Denver’s water — let’s talk about how to conserve our most precious resource.
Week three: Use only what you need
The weather in this area constantly fluctuates (Ebbs and flows highlights the extremes we faced in 2013 alone), but it’s typically dry. Denver receives an average of 15 inches of precipitation each year, which is about a fourth of the precipitation a tropical city such as Miami receives. We’ve also experienced several severe droughts in the past that have challenged our water system. We never know the extent of a dry period or when precipitation may come, so conservation has to be a way of life for all of us.
There are many things we can do indoors and outdoors to reduce the amount of water we use every day. Conservation is an integral part of Denver Water’s three-pronged approach for a reliable water supply, along with expanding our recycled water system and securing new supply.
Online resources
- Learn about Denver Water’s annual summer watering rules, Fix a Leak Week, ways to transform a landscape to be more water efficient and much more under the Conservation & Drought section of this blog.
- Check out Denver Water’s Tips & Tools page to learn how to conserve water inside and outside. Denver Water coined the term xeriscape in 1981 to help make low-water-use landscaping an easily recognized concept.
- Denver Water has long campaigned for customers to Use Only What You Need. Check out photos and videos from past years.
Activity — Ask students how they would create a campaign to reduce water use and let them use their art skills to produce a marketing campaign by drawing pictures of billboards, commercials or ads.
Charts, graphs & maps
- This graph shows that Denver Water customers have done a great job conserving water. Since the early 1970s, the number of people Denver Water serves has increased by almost 50 percent while the amount of treated water those customers use has increased only 6 percent.
Online activities
- Project Wet’s Use Water Wisely game has students play the role of a water detective to identify wise water use and water wasters in the community.
- The Environmental Protection Agency’s interactive quiz, Test your WaterSense, has students move the water-efficiency hero Flo through a maze of water pipes by answering water-efficiency questions.
- Test your memory by matching water conservation tips in the Tip Tank from Water Use It Wisely. Students can also go through nearly 200 water-saving tips on the 100+ Ways to Conserve page.
Recent water news
- Denver Water without a drought? – KUVO (conservation)
- Race is on to beat snowmelt in areas pummeled by fall’s Colorado flood– Denver Post (water management)
- High Snowpack Has Frisco Marina Hoping For A Better Boating Season – KUNC (recreation)
- 7 Reasons Water-Lovers Should Visit the “Living West” Exhibit at History Colorado – Your Water Colorado Blog (education)