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Highlands Ranch Water & Sanitation District

Highlands Ranch Water & Sanitation District is the public water system serving 103,444 people in Douglas County, from surface water. It buys water from Wise Project and Denver Water Board. It also sells water wholesale to 3 systems.
Community system · EPA id CO0118015 · filed with EPA as “HIGHLANDS RANCH WSD”

Serves Highlands Ranch.

People served
103,444
Service connections
42,300
Primary source
Surface water
Owner
Local government
Counties served
Douglas
Water district

Boundary traced from Douglas County. About 94 km².

Where the water comes from

FacilityKindWater
WELL D9WellGroundwater
WELL TD4WellGroundwater
WELL TD5WellGroundwater
WELL TD6WellGroundwater
WELL TD12WellGroundwater
WELL A6RWellGroundwater
WELL A12RWellGroundwater
WELL D1WellGroundwater
WELL D12RWellGroundwater
WELL LFH2WellGroundwater
WELL LFH7WellGroundwater
WELL LFH8RWellGroundwater
WELL LFH9WellGroundwater
WELL LFH10RWellGroundwater
WELL LFH11WellGroundwater
WELL LFH13WellGroundwater
WELL LFH14RWellGroundwater
WELL LFH15WellGroundwater
WELL D10AWellGroundwater
WELL LFH4RWellGroundwater
WELL D7WellGroundwater
MCLELLAN RESERVOIRIntakeSurface water
WELL A5RWellGroundwater
WELL A7RWellGroundwater
WELL A11RWellGroundwater
WELL D5WellGroundwater
WELL D11WellGroundwater
WELL D13WellGroundwater
WELL D15WellGroundwater
WELL D19WellGroundwater
WELL A9RWellGroundwater
WELL A10RWellGroundwater
WELL A13RWellGroundwater
WELL D14WellGroundwater
WELL D16WellGroundwater
WELL D17WellGroundwater
WELL D18WellGroundwater
WELL D20WellGroundwater
WELL TD7WellGroundwater
WELL TD8WellGroundwater
WELL TD9WellGroundwater
WELL A1WellGroundwater
WELL TD10WellGroundwater
WELL LFH3WellGroundwater
WELL A3WellGroundwater
WELL A4WellGroundwater
WELL SP-9WellGroundwater under the influence of surface water
WELL SP-10WellGroundwater under the influence of surface water
WELL SP-11WellGroundwater under the influence of surface water
WELL SP-12WellGroundwater under the influence of surface water
SOUTH PLATTE RESERVIOIRReservoirSurface water
ENGLEWOOD CITY DITCHIntakeSurface water
PA-7S REDRILLWellGroundwater
PURCHASED WATER WISE CO0103843Consecutive connection (purchased)Surface water · from WISE PROJECT
PURCHASED FROM CO0116001Consecutive connection (purchased)Surface water · from DENVER WATER BOARD
WELL A-2RWellGroundwater
WELL A-8RWellGroundwater

These are EPA's facility records, not DWR structures. Which decreed rights sit behind an intake is the next phase; nothing here is inferred.

Wholesale connections

Buys water from WISE PROJECT, DENVER WATER BOARD.

Sells water to 3 systems: CASTLE PINES NORTH MD, NORTHERN DOUGLAS COUNTY WSD, ROXBOROUGH NW DOUGLAS COUNTY.

DWR structures that name this system

Source Probable join · fetched 2026-09-09 · matched on DWR's recorded contact or an EPA intake name; verify on the dossier

No DWR structure on file records this system as its contact, and none of its EPA intakes matches a structure name in its districts. DWR records a contact on only a fraction of structures, and only for districts fetched from its live service, so this is absence of a record, not evidence of no rights.

Compliance record

Source Register of another agency · fetched 2026-09-09 · verify at EPA ECHO ↗

No open violation and no health-based violation on EPA's federal record for this system at the last monthly fetch. That is a record of reported compliance, not a test result: SDWIS carries violations, not routine sample values.

EPA's own summary: violations in 0 of the last 12 quarters.

No health-based or open violation on the federal record for this system.

What the regulator did about it

10 enforcement actions on this system's federal record. In Colorado the state is the primacy agency, so most actions are the state's; EPA acts directly on tribal systems and when it steps in.

DateActionBy
2021-07-01 St Compliance achieved state
2021-02-11 St Violation/Reminder Notice state
2021-02-11 St Public Notif requested state
2017-08-28 St Violation/Reminder Notice state
2017-08-28 St Public Notif requested state
2017-08-28 St Violation/Reminder Notice state
2017-08-28 St Public Notif requested state
2017-08-28 St Violation/Reminder Notice state
2017-08-28 St Public Notif requested state
2017-08-28 St Compliance achieved state

Lead and copper

The latest 90th-percentile lead result is 0.002 mg/L (sampling period ending 2025-12-31) against an action level of 0.015 mg/L, below it. 17 results on file.

The action level is not a health limit: it is the level at which the rule requires a system to act (corrosion control, public education, and in some cases replacing lead service lines). Lead mostly enters water from household plumbing, so a system-wide percentile does not tell you what comes out of one tap.

Violation, enforcement and lead/copper records are EPA SDWIS federal reporting, fetched monthly; the summary is EPA ECHO. Code names come from EPA's own REF_CODE_VALUE table. SDWIS carries violations, not routine sample results — nitrate, disinfection by-product and PFAS values are not in it, and a clean record here means nothing was reported as a violation, not that nothing was ever detected. For what was measured, ask the system for its Consumer Confidence Report.

PFAS and lithium: EPA's UCMR 5 monitoring, 2023–2025

Source Register of another agency · fetched 2026-09-09 · verify at EPA UCMR occurrence data ↗

8 samples, 210 results, 2024-01-29 to 2024-10-07. 4 of the 29 PFAS were detected at least once; lithium was measured up to 35.2 µg/L (no federal limit).

ContaminantResultsDetectedHighest, µg/LReporting limit
HFPO-DA 7 0 < 0.005 0.005
PFBA 7 3 0.0087 0.005
PFBS 7 2 0.005 0.003
PFHxA 7 2 0.0051 0.003
PFHxS 7 0 < 0.003 0.003
PFNA 7 0 < 0.004 0.004
PFOA 7 0 < 0.004 0.004
PFOS 7 0 < 0.004 0.004
PFPeA 7 3 0.0057 0.003
lithium 7 6 35.2 9.0

Rows shown: every detected contaminant plus the regulated PFAS and lithium; the rest were below their reporting limits. These are UCMR monitoring samples, not compliance samples. EPA's April 2024 rule set 4.0 ng/L (0.004 µg/L) for PFOA and PFOS, the same as UCMR 5's reporting limit, so any detection of either is at or above it; the rule's compliance date and its other limits have been under revision since 2025 and are not applied here. State PFAS sampling is on CDPHE's pages ↗.

Common questions

Who provides drinking water in Highlands Ranch, Colorado?

Highlands Ranch Water & Sanitation District is the public water system serving 103,444 people in Douglas County, from surface water. Its EPA public water system id is CO0118015.

Where does Highlands Ranch Water & Sanitation District get its water?

Highlands Ranch Water & Sanitation District reports surface water as its primary source. EPA lists its source facilities as WELL D9, WELL TD4, WELL TD5, WELL TD6.

Does Highlands Ranch Water & Sanitation District have any drinking water violations?

EPA's compliance record shows no open health-based violations for Highlands Ranch Water & Sanitation District at the last monthly fetch. Older and non-health-based entries, if any, are listed on this page.

Places this system serves

Census places its EPA service-area boundary substantially covers. Each page lists every system serving that place.

Every provider in Douglas County.

The record

EPA SDWIS federal reporting as of 2026-09-08; the compliance record above is EPA's own, fetched monthly, and the ECHO report carries the rest. Report a problem →