Summer monsoons brought record rainfall to Ouray in July 2012, and August is off to a sodden start. Thus, it made for some head-scratching last week, when the Ouray City Council voted to enact water conservation measures within the City of Ouray. The newly adopted resolution, which went into effect last week, asks citizens to restrict yard watering to specific hours and to specific days, depending upon which side of Main Street they live on. The conservation measures are strictly voluntary, as the city does not possess the resources to allow for active enforcement of mandatory restrictions. The resolution was basically mandated by the Colorado Division of Water Resources as a condition of that entity’s pending approval of the city’s Emergency Substitute Water Supply Plan, to show CDWR that the city is doing something to curb its water usage in light of a recent call on the city’s water by downstream users with senior rights. Ouray is considered a renegade by CDWR, due to the fact that it is one of the only municipalities in the state that does not use water meters to measure its municipal water use.

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