![]() I also know that, since then, the Colorado Springs metropolitan area has more than doubled in population and sprawled far into the Eastern Plains, and that today much of its water comes from the other side of the mountains, from tributaries of the Colorado River. I now know that the city’s water in those days came from local surface streams and wells. All I knew was that every time I attached a hose to a spigot and turned it on, I could run it full force until it was time to go home. One night, I dreamed that one of the Rain Bird rotary sprinklers we used at work was keeping me awake by rhythmically spraying me in bed, and I made a mental note to ask my housemate not to water my room while I was trying to sleep.Īmong the many questions I failed to ask myself that summer was where all the water we used at work came from. The grass began to turn brown almost the moment we moved our sprinklers, partly because we were a mile above sea level in what is essentially a desert, and partly because the apartment complex had been built on porous ground, on the site of an old quarry. During most of day, my co-workers and I moved hoses and sprinklers around the property, to keep the grass green then we mowed what we had grown. In 1976, when I was twenty-one, I spent the summer living in a rented house in Colorado Springs and working on the grounds crew of an apartment complex on what was then the outskirts of the city.
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