The City’s Public Works Department has been working 7 days a week since the Marshall Fire to restore water to all homes in Louisville and this work is now complete. Safety continues to be the City’s top priority and we are grateful to everyone for their patience over the last month and a half as we worked to restore safe drinking water to affected homes.

Louisville’s Water

The City’s water supply meets or exceeds all drinking water standards and has been safe to use/consume since the Boil Water Order was lifted by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) on January 6.

Around 80 homes in severely fire-impacted areas had their water turned off to isolate those areas from the rest of Louisville’s water. After extensive sampling, testing and flushing by the Public Works Department over the course of January and February, water has now been restored to these homes.

Continued Testing

Although the City’s drinking water continues to meet or exceed all regulatory requirements as set by CDPHE and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Public Works Department has decided to continue its testing program during the recovery period and make test results available on the interactive map.

If your home is adjacent to a severely fire-affected area and you have vulnerable members of your household, including infants, the elderly, and/or immunocompromised individuals, please feel free to contact the Public Works Department to request individual water testing. This is not mandatory, but the City is offering this free testing to provide peace of mind to residents. To request a test, email MarshallFire@LouisvilleCO.gov or call 720.824.3100.

For more details about specific areas and testing results, view the City’s interactive map of the sampling locations and results. Click on each sample and scroll through the arrows to see the sampling history. When test results in affected areas came back ‘noncompliant’ and did not meet drinking water standards, the City continued the flushing protocol to purge the unsatisfactory water with safe drinking water and retested until sample results indicated service could be restored.

Firefighting Efforts Lead to Boil Water Order  

During the Marshall Fire, Louisville's water system experienced extreme demand from firefighting efforts. Despite the efforts to keep water pressure up for firefighting, the system continued to lose pressure as the fire damaged the system. One of the emergency measures taken to restore pressure to the system was to release untreated Marshall Reservoir water into the distribution systems. 

As a direct result of these emergency measures, a Boil Water Order was issued on December 30 for Louisville due to the possibility of pathogens and contaminants entering our water systems. The Public Works Department worked around the clock for five days to flush Louisville's systems and test the water to ensure that it met all state and federal water quality standards so that the Boil Water Order could be lifted by CDPHE.

To support firefighting efforts, Louisville temporally connected its system to Superior’s water system during the fire while electrical service was restored to Superior’s water treatment plant. Louisville and Superior are no longer actively connected.