There are four different ways you can report a leak or broken sprinkler on Highlands Ranch Metro District property:

1. Use the Report a Concern tool on the Metro District’s website: highlandsranch.org/report
2. Call 303-791-2710
3. Email info@highlandsranch.org
4. Outside of regular business hours, call 303-415-3003

If you have a neighbor who is running their irrigation system more than they should, please send an email to info@hrwater.org and please provide the address and your contact information if you would like staff to follow-up with you.

Xcel Energy is maintains street lights in Highlands Ranch. You can report a street light outage through Xcel’s website. You will need the pole number to report the outage. You can find the number printed in a bright color, located about eye-level on the light pole.

The district recently almost doubled its water storage capacity, adding about 7,000 acre feet of storage for a total of over 17,000 acre feet. An acre foot is more than 300,000 gallons of water and enough to fill a football field with one foot of water. This additional storage is in Chatfield Reservoir and it came about as a result of 20 years of work by the district's board and staff and several other water districts, in coordination with state and federal agencies. This project was a great success and something that will benefit our community for decades to come.  

For comparison, our community uses about 15,000 acre feet of water per year from reservoirs. We were blessed with lots of rain this year, and our reservoirs are currently completely full. Given that we were only able to store about 10,000 acre feet in previous years, we’re in great shape from the perspective of water stored per resident.

The district does not currently have any additional storage projects planned, but the board and staff continue to look for opportunities

The infrastructure improvement fee is similar to the water service availability fee, albeit with a slightly different focus. One issue perpetually facing water and wastewater utilities is that the biggest share of costs are fixed. The service availability charge was implemented to support fixed costs such as annual debt service, water meter replacement, and some funding for infrastructure repair. This meant a more stable rate for variable water service charges that can increase dramatically with higher water use.

Similarly, the infrastructure improvement fee is meant to provide a dedicated funding source for infrastructure and continuity of operations in the long-term. Our community is nearly built-out, so any revenue from new development and connections to our system is declining and no longer a reliable source of funding for infrastructure.

Highlands Ranch Water has wrestled with preparing a rate structure that guarantees the district the ability to meet its obligations while ensuring doing so at rates that are reasonable for ratepayers in the community. That’s one reason the district consistently has the lowest rates compared to our neighbors, and likely we’ll still have some of the lowest rates across the front range even if the proposed infrastructure improvement fee is adopted. This is in addition to the fact that Highlands Ranch Water is funded solely by water rates, and does not levy a property tax as many water providers do.

A rate comparison from 2023-2024 can be found on page 35 of of the