What You Need to Know About Our Water

The Fort Collins – Loveland Water District serves over 60,000 people in the Northern Colorado community, delivering high-quality, reliable drinking water 24/7/365.

But what do we mean when we describe our water as “high-quality?” What should our community understand about water security and reliability? And, how does our pricing reflect the true value of our water?

In this guide, we’re answering all of these questions to give customers insight into our primary mission: to provide high-quality, secure, reliable, and affordable water to Northern Colorado. Read on to learn more about how and why we prioritize these four qualities without sacrifice.

Water You Can Count On

Let’s explore our District’s key values and break down how they shape our operations and service.

Ensuring High Quality Water

At Fort Collins – Loveland Water District, quality always comes first. We’re focused on delivering quality in two key areas:

1. Water quality – We work hard to provide safe, delicious, and drinkable water without cutting corners.
2. Service quality – We’re committed to exceeding your expectations 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Our efforts to preserve and pursue water quality can’t be overstated. Here’s just a taste of what we do to maintain the highest water quality possible:

• Testing – We take testing very seriously, performing quality tests monthly, quarterly and annually. And we don’t put tests off until tomorrow or take a laid-back approach to meeting testing deadlines. Regular, thorough testing helps us detect issues and implement solutions in a timely fashion.
• Reviewing regulatory standards – We strive to meet or exceed regulatory standards for water quality. But we can only do that by staying up-to-date on those standards. That’s why we also regularly review water quality guidelines and industry best practices to continue to deliver the quality our customers deserve.
• Managing sources – Like other water suppliers, we get water from a variety of nearby sources. If one source isn’t delivering a product that meets our standards, we immediately change our source to get back on track. So, we have to be as proactive about building, maintaining and monitoring our water source portfolio as possible to ensure our water continually meets our high standards.

In addition to water quality, service quality is a cornerstone of our business model. We pursue peak customer service by:

• Being available to the community – There’s always someone available to answer your questions about our water, whether you’re looking for in-depth quality information or details about our infrastructure.
• Staffing experts – We hire and train state-certified distribution operators to serve our community. By staffing industry experts, we can perform repairs in-house and increase our entire team’s knowledge base.
• Following SOPs to the letter – Our standard operating procedures prioritize both efficiency and quality. When we follow our carefully-designed policies, we can limit service downtime without cutting corners.

At Fort Collins – Loveland Water District, we deeply understand that water quality doesn’t happen by accident—we take a full-spectrum approach to deliver the best of the best to our customers in Northern Colorado.

Providing Water Security

Another key benchmark is water security—giving you peace of mind that your water, our services, and our organization are safe. To that end, we take steps to make sure that:

• Your water is physically safe – Our facilities and equipment are highly secure to prevent tampering and unauthorized access.
• Our community’s water supply is secure – Planning is key to supply security, and we’re proud of our efforts to maintain a consistent water supply—even during drought years.
• Our organization is financially safe – Economic conditions can change on a dime. By maintaining a financial safety net, we ensure that we can stay operational, even throughout the deepest economic downturn.
• Our team is prepared for the future – With succession planning, cross-training, and redundancy at top of mind, we maintain a sustainable staff. That means our roster is always full of experts who are ready to serve you.

At the end of the day, we know the difference between luck and performance is planning—that’s why we invest time and resources into securing your water supply.

Maintaining a Reliable Water Source

Quality plus security equals reliability.

At Fort Collins – Loveland Water District, providing water with limited interruptions is at the heart of everything we do. To achieve that, we:

1. Prepare for emergencies – To quickly respond to emergencies, we prepare and drill extensive contingency plans. With clear procedures in place, we can respond to outages and restore service as soon as possible.
2. Invest carefully – In Colorado, water suppliers must purchase water rights to meet customer demand. So, we treat our water supply like an investment portfolio: we’re constantly growing, making smart transactions to minimize risk, and diversifying our sources to keep our supply sustainable.

Offering reliable service is key to earning our community’s trust. We do everything we can to make sure our customers can always turn on their taps with confidence.

Keeping Water Affordable and Valuable

Maintaining consistent, fair pricing is a delicate balancing act for water suppliers—it’s easy to fall to one of two extremes:

1. Low rates, low quality – When utilities charge the lowest possible rates, they may be compromising quality—purchasing from lower-quality sources or failing to maintain infrastructure.
2. High rates, high volatility – When utilities charge as much as they can for services, this might reflect poor financial planning in the recent past. Failing to build a safety net for capital projects, emergencies, and future investments can result in rate hikes for customers.

At Fort Collins – Loveland Water District, we strive to stay near the median price in our area to equally prioritize water quality, financial stability, and value for our customers.

“When you pay too much, you lose a little money – that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do.” – John Ruskin

Fort Collins – Loveland Water District: Sip with Confidence

We’re a single-mission organization: everything we do ensures that we can provide high-quality, secure, reliable, and affordable water to the Northern Colorado community.

At Fort Collins – Loveland Water District, our customers’ steady access to safe and delicious drinking water is our top priority—and we do everything in our power to deliver on that promise every day.

To learn more about how we’re embodying our mission in real-time, check out our blog for more updates and news.