Palmer Lake, Colorado

Colorado

The town of Palmer Lake spent years without a lake, its namesake bed sitting completely dry.

naturalhistoricalengineering

For a while, Palmer Lake had no lake. The water dried up completely in the summer of 2012, after Douglas County cut off the supply. Residents wanted the town to pipe water down from the two mountain reservoirs that feed the taps. The Board of Trustees refused. They put the question plainly: should the water supply be protected for the health and safety of citizens, or used for mostly aesthetic purposes? Downtown businesses suffered. So did the mood in town. By 2014 the lake was nearly dry again, and the bed sat empty in 2013. What broke it was weather and lawyers arriving at once. In 2015 the town won a change to an old industrial water right, letting it top the lake off. That same spring brought the wettest May in more than seventy years. Rain and spring water raised the north end by nearly eight feet. State wildlife crews started stocking fish again that fall.

This is the first of 3 parts. The rest runs about 3 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.

What this was written from
The town's namesake lake dried up completely during the summer of 2012 due to Douglas County stopping the water supply.

Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Nearby, on the same roads

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