Water managers in Ouray County are asking residents to curtail water use and avoid putting more demand on their distribution systems in light of the Gold Mountain Fire and ongoing tinder-dry conditions.

The town of Ridgway implemented mandatory water restrictions last week, prohibiting any irrigating between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m., as well as any irrigating on Monday. Properties on the south side of Colorado Highway 62 and Hunter Parkway should irrigate only on Tuesday and Saturday. Properties on the north side of the highway and Hunter Parkway should irrigate only on Wednesday and Sunday. Irrigation of town parks should be limited to the minimum needed to keep grass alive.

During a Ouray County commissioners’ meeting last week, Ridgway Mayor John Clark pleaded with residents to follow the restrictions.

“It’s a very critical time water-wise. Please honor that,” Clark said.

Water production at the town’s water treatment plant from July 2-5 this year exceeded the same time last year and 2024, Ridgway Town Manager Preston Neill told the Plaindealer on Monday.

Over those four days, the plant produced 1.04 million gallons of water, about 100,000 gallons more than 2025 and 150,000 gallons more than 2024.

A small portion of that increased usage is attributed to the town providing water to firefighting crews at the Ouray County 4-H Event Center and Fairgrounds for cooking, laundry, showering and other uses, Neill said.

He said officials from the Rocky Mountain Critical Incident Management Team 3 estimated crews used about 8,000 gallons of water from a fire hydrant at the east end of the fairgrounds each day on July 2 and 3 and about 3,000 gallons each day on July 4 and 5.

Neill said town leaders have told fire managers they can pull water from Lake Otonowanda southwest of Ridgway to fight the fire, if necessary, but that the incident management team has been reluctant to do so because the lake serves as the primary source of drinking water for Ridgway. To his knowledge, no helicopters have pulled water from the lake so far.

“I’m glad they’re hesitant on that, but at the same time, this is life safety — they should go into Lake O (if they need to),” Neill said.

He said the town has curtailed irrigation more at Rollans, Heritage and Cottonwood park than at more heavily used parks like Hartwell Park and the Athletic Park. Hartwell Park, in particular, receives regular usage between the weekly Thursday night concerts and the weekly Friday farmers’ markets.

“It’s a fine balance. We could shut off watering the parks, and then it just looks like a barren wasteland,” he said.

He said residents should be prepared to limit water use for weeks, potentially months.

Meanwhile, a sudden increase in demand since the fire ignited June 27 has put stress on Tri County Conservancy District’s water system on top of a coincidental water main break early on the morning of July 1. That led the water provider to ask folks to be conscientious about their water use.

“We had people watering with sprinklers on their cars,” said Tri-County Assistant Manager Dylan Ross.

While Ross said he understands people are panicked, he said the excessive water use created a situation where his staff needed to contact water customers and ask them to please stop watering outside 24-7 to preserve water in the distribution system for others.

“We have people that are way out of the fire zone … all the way out near Pleasant Valley or County Road 24, that turn on sprinklers and they haven’t turned them off,” he said.

Each of Tri-County’s taps can run an estimated 20 to 30 gallons per minute, Ross said. He described a chain reaction that put stress on the water system.

“It can turn into thousands of gallons per minute of water … it’s excessive watering,” he said. “So please only use it for personal use or emergencies.”

Tri-County’s crews have been working constantly since the fire erupted, Ross said, ensuring that fire crews have access to water and fixing routine breaks that are unrelated to the fire. That included a water main break that threatened the water tank on County Road 10, which holds 1 million gallons.

While Ross said the conservancy district is not experiencing a shortage of raw water, the issue is more about sudden demands on the system due to unusual spikes in usage.

“We’re not limiting the use of water, we’re just asking people to do it responsibly, and don’t water for 24 hours,” he said.

The Montrose-based conservancy district treats water that comes from Blue Mesa Reservoir and transports it through more than 600 miles of pipeline with a series of pump stations to customers in Delta, Montrose and Ouray counties. Its southernmost customers in Ouray County are in the Idlewild subdivision north of Ouray. It also operates the Ridgway Reservoir dam. Its service area in Ouray County includes homes along U.S Highway 550, Pleasant Valley, northern Log Hill Mesa and Ponderosa Village as well as the wider county.