In the early days of summer, it remained a matter of some debate where the drought of 2026 ranked in the annals of long, hot Colorado summers.

For Cary Denison, Ouray County’s representative on the Colorado River Water Conservation District, that debate is settled.

“It’s absolutely the worst year I’ve ever seen,” Denison said.

“Not only from a water supply standpoint, but a temperature and precipitation standpoint,” he continued. “Going into the water year, we had a very warm winter with extremely low snowpack that was reduced by incredibly warm temperatures in March. Then high temperatures through part of the summer led to high crop water demand.”

“It’s honestly, in some places, a perfect storm for low streamflow impacts to producers and all water users. It’s as bad as I’ve ever seen,” Denison added.

The 2026 water year — which began in October — is currently slated to be the state’s warmest on record, according to Colorado State University’s Colorado Climate Center. While 2002 was a drier year, according to the center, statewide average temperatures are more than 6 degrees Fahrenheit above average.

Nearly two-thirds of Ouray County is in a state of extreme drought, according to the federal government’s drought monitor, consequences of which can include large fires, extremely low reservoir levels, degraded forage for animals and streams drying up. The remaining third of the county is under the slightly less-acute designation of severe drought.

In spite of the eye-popping figures, most water managers serving the county said mandatory cutbacks for users aren’t yet needed. Even in the city of Ouray, where water isn’t metered for individual customers and the city’s raw water source is experiencing lower inflows, restrictions are not on the table.

Ridgway

Thus far, the town of Ridgway is the only of the county’s water providers that ordered cutbacks, which went into effect in early July shortly after the start of the Gold Mountain Fire and limit users’ irrigation to two days per week. The town council was expected to reconsider the restrictions this week, citing healthy rainfall in recent weeks, the approach of cooler temperatures, a drawdown in irrigation usage and healthy water levels in Lake Otonowanda, the town’s water reservoir.

Though the restrictions have been mandatory, Town Manager Preston Neill told the Plaindealer the town largely relied on voluntary compliance.

“We don’t go around patrolling properties on any given day. We just don’t have the staff or bandwidth to do that. We’re largely complaint-based, from a code enforcement perspective,” Neill said, adding that the town has yet to receive any such complaints of excessive use. Ridgway also uses a tiered water rate system that raises rates for high-usage customers.

According to figures provided by Neill, Ridgway water customers used about 7.44 million gallons of water this July, down a little more than 3% from about 7.7 million gallons in July 2025 when the town was under more stringent stage 3 restrictions thanks to floods that destroyed the town’s water diversion system in 2024.

Neill said this July’s figures also include usage from the Gold Mountain Fire’s incident camp at the county fairgrounds, which pumped up consumption.

“It’s not uncommon, at least in the seven years that I’ve been here, to see — throughout the month of July and a good portion of the chunk of August — 300,000 gallons plus (of daily usage) on really hot days, especially the weekends,” he added, a figure the town hasn’t cracked this summer.

“It’s surprising to me that we’re not even really close to that,” he added.

Ouray

Ouray, meanwhile, has not proposed restricting residents’ use of water, which for the city originates at Weehawken Spring. Unlike other providers, the city uses an “equivalency rate” system that bills customers at a flat rate based on the type of structure and its capacity.

The city previously entertained metering the water of its more than 600 customers – and in fact spent roughly $82,000 on meters – but scrapped that plan in 2022 as city staff said they needed to focus on construction of Ouray’s sewage and water treatment plants.

City code allows the council to impose stage 1 restrictions — which primarily limit irrigating — in case of a statewide drought condition. But Mayor Michael Underwood said he hasn’t seen a need for mandatory limits, telling the Plaindealer that as of early July the city’s water supply was “extremely adequate.”

“It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to want to use water, in terms of watering lines and those types of things, in the middle of a hot day and in drought conditions, because it’s not the best use of water,” Underwood said. “That’s just common sense anyway.”

Documents provided to the Plaindealer under a public records request show that the city’s inflows from Weehawken Spring through July of this year are down about 14.5% compared to 2025. Consumption, meanwhile, dropped about 5% year over year during the same period of January through July.

In June of this year, water usage in the city plummeted by more than 34% compared to the year prior. But in July, usage jumped nearly 48% over the same month in 2025, despite a significant dropoff in tourist visitation after the Gold Mountain Fire began.

Ouray Public Works Director Joe Coleman did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story over the past three weeks.

Tri-County

Tri-County Water Conservancy District — which serves customers as far north as Delta and as far south as the Idlewild subdivision between Ridgway and Ouray, including 941 households in Ouray County — likewise says it hasn’t yet seen any reason to order cutbacks from its customers.

The provider shares 28,100 acre-feet of water stored in Ridgway Reservoir with a handful of other utilities making up the Project 7 water cooperative, which includes the municipalities of Montrose, Delta and Olathe. Thus far, according to Tri-County General Manager Jerry Young, the cooperative has only used about 7,500 acre-feet of its 28,100 total.

Young said even with drought conditions this year, the Project 7 members’ share of the reservoir filled completely, with Tri-County’s nearly 13,000 acrefoot slice of the pie providing its source for residential and industrial customers.

“This year, our water rights tied to Ridgway Reservoir filled to 100%, so we didn’t feel like we needed to impose water restrictions,” Young said, adding that the calculus could change if severe drought conditions continue in years to come.

“It could change,” he said. “We could see a year where Ridgway doesn’t fill. It doesn’t need to fill for our water rights to hit 100%, but we could see it hit a level where our water shares in the reservoir didn’t meet the 100% allocation in a continued drought.”

Dallas Creek

Lee Register, administrator of the private Dallas Creek Water Company, said ordering restrictions would require an amendment to the company’s tariff, which currently doesn’t have any mechanism for mandated cutbacks. Dallas Creek is one of the only privately owned water companies in Colorado, and serves customers on Log Hill Mesa, as well as irrigation water to the Fairway Pines Golf Course. Its rates are controlled by the state Public Utilities Commission.

As for the health of the Dallas Creek system, Register said he’d only taken over as administrator about two years ago and couldn’t compare this year to droughts past. But streamflow data from the U.S. Geological Survey shows that the creek, like most other waterways, has been at historically low levels through most of the summer.

“We’re just doing the best we can, like anybody else,” Register said. “The reality is, we can’t control what comes down off the mountain.” Chart Riggall is a Report for America journalist focused on covering environmental issues. His work also contributes to the Western Environmental Reporting Collaborative with High Country News and other news outlets across the West. Reach him via email at chart@ouraynews. com and contact erin@ouraynews. com to make a tax-deductible donation to support his work here for the community.