Town of Estes Park

Q: Where does the Town of Estes Park get its water?

The Town of Estes Park reports surface water as its primary source. EPA lists its source facilities as GRAND LAKE VIA THE ADAMS TUNNEL, GLACIER CREEK, MARYS LAKE INTAKE.

Q: Does the Town of Estes Park have any drinking water violations?

EPA's compliance record shows no open health-based violations for the Town of Estes Park at the last monthly fetch. Older and non-health-based entries, if any, are listed on this page.

The Town of Estes Park is the public water system serving 16,722 people in Larimer County, from surface water. It also sells water wholesale to 5 systems. EPA modelled this service area rather than tracing it from a utility map, so treat the edge as approximate.

Community system · EPA id CO0135257 · filed with EPA as “ESTES PARK TOWN OF”

Serves Estes Park.

People served

16,722

Service connections

8,399

Primary source

Surface water

Owner

Local government

Counties served

Larimer

Water district

Big Thompson River

Modelled boundary. EPA estimated this service area (Random Forest) rather than tracing a utility-supplied map; treat the edge as approximate. About 29 km².

Where the water comes from

Facility	Kind	Water
GRAND LAKE VIA THE ADAMS TUNNEL	Intake	Surface water
GLACIER CREEK	Intake	Surface water
MARYS LAKE INTAKE	Intake	Surface water

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

Sells water to 5 systems: WINDCLIFF POA, YMCA ROCKIES WIND RIVER, JOHN TIMOTHY STONE CLIFFS ASSOC, RAVENCREST CHALET, WATER MAN THE.

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

1 structure on DWR's record 1 matches an EPA intake by name. A match says who DWR lists, not who owns the water: a ditch company can own the headgate while the system owns shares, and a consultant can be the contact. The dossier holds the decree.

Structure	Type	Source	District	Matched on
GLACIER CREEK PL 0400648	7	GLACIER CREEK	Big Thompson River	intake name: GLACIER CREEK

Compliance record

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

Nothing open today, but 1 health-based violation appears on the federal record historically. The history is below.

EPA's own summary: violations in 1 of the last 12 quarters. In violation for, in EPA's words: 2456=Total Haloacetic Acids (HAA5); 2950=TTHM.

What happened

All 1 violation record on file, grouped into the 1 distinct thing EPA's codes describe. Dates are the compliance period the violation is filed against.

Treatment Technique (SWTR and GWR) — SWTR health-based

A required treatment step was not carried out or not proved. 1 record, 2022-12-01.
Rule: Surface Water Treatment Rule -- filtration and disinfection.

Every violation record, as filed (1 of 1)

Compliance period	What	About	Kind	Status	Measured
2022-12-01 – 2022-12-31	Treatment Technique (SWTR and GWR)	SWTR	health-based	returned to compliance (2023-02-01)

What the regulator did about it

11 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.

Date	Action	By
2024-06-27	St Public Notif received 2023 CCR	state
2023-11-14	St Compliance achieved RTC w/ 4Q2023 compliance period sample in accordance with rule TJ 8/6/2024	state
2023-10-23	St Violation/Reminder Notice	state
2023-10-23	St Public Notif requested	state
2023-02-10	St Public Notif received	state
2023-02-01	St Compliance achieved	state
2023-01-04	St Violation/Reminder Notice	state
2023-01-04	St Public Notif requested	state
2022-01-11	St Violation/Reminder Notice	state
2022-01-11	St Public Notif requested	state
2022-01-01	St Compliance achieved	state

Lead and copper

The latest 90th-percentile lead result is 0.0014 mg/L (sampling period ending 2025-12-31) against an action level of 0.015 mg/L, below it. 6 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 ↗

9 samples, 240 results, 2023-02-27 to 2023-11-13. No PFAS was detected at the reporting limits; lithium was not detected.

Contaminant	Results	Highest, µg/L	Reporting limit
HFPO-DA	8	< 0.005	0.005
PFHxS	8	< 0.003	0.003
PFNA	8	< 0.004	0.004
PFOA	8	< 0.004	0.004
PFOS	8	< 0.004	0.004
lithium	8	< 9.0	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 Estes Park, Colorado?

The Town of Estes Park is the public water system serving 16,722 people in Larimer County, from surface water. Its EPA public water system id is CO0135257.

Where does the Town of Estes Park get its water?