Environmental and Water Resources Institute
​The Colorado Environmental and Water Resources Institute (EWRI) Chapter is committed to advancing the fields of environmental and water resources. Currently, the chapter is focused on revitalizing its presence and increasing local engagement. As part of these efforts, we plan to host quarterly presentations to foster knowledge sharing and professional development. We are actively seeking speakers and sponsors for upcoming events. If you are interested in supporting the chapter—whether by joining the revitalization team, sponsoring an event, or serving as a speaker—please contact the current Chair, Tasha Neel, at ewri@ascecolorado.org for more information.
NEWS
​Benefits and Challenges of Water Supply Ditch to Pipeline Conversion
Presentation - Thursday, July 9th, 2026 - 5:00 - 7:30 MT
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Englewood is turning its iconic City Ditch into a cutting‑edge, year‑round water supply—delivering cleaner, better‑tasting water while boosting reliability, safety, and long‑term sustainability for the entire community. This presentation reveals how a 2.5‑mile infrastructure upgrade became a showcase of smart design, community coordination, and forward‑thinking engineering that positions Englewood for the future.
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Delivering safe, dependable drinking water to Englewood residents is a top priority for the City of Englewood. While Englewood’s treated water meets drinking water regulations, the source of our water can adversely affect the taste, odor and hardness from time to time. Englewood’s primary water supply is delivered through the City Ditch from Chatfield Reservoir to Englewood through a combination of buried pipeline, overhead flumes, and open channel ditch through parts of unincorporated Douglas and Arapahoe Counties and the City of Littleton before reaching Englewood’s Allen Water Treatment Plant (Allen WTP). City Ditch is one of Englewood’s most critical water infrastructure assets. Englewood is converting its remaining 2.5-miles of open channel sections between Chatfield Reservoir and the Allen WTP to buried pipe.
This presentation will review the numerous benefits to the City including water quality, improving the system reliability and safety, transforming this supply from seasonal operation to year-round, addressing water loss, reducing energy use, and reducing the need for additional capital projects.
The presentation will also review design and construction challenges and how proactive management provided an overall benefit to the City. This includes extensive stakeholder engagement, defined work areas and coordination with road and trail users, the challenge of gravity hydraulics and matching the existing piping, designing for current and future operational needs, permitting and agency coordination, management of limited available cover, stormwater coordination, aligning with seasonal ditch operations, value engineering, and use of existing easements and railroad coordination.
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PAST EVENTS
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March 2026 Technical Meeting​
The March 3, 2026 EWRI technical meeting feature​d Dr. Kristen Croft on the Interactions and Treatment of Metals in Urban Stormwater.
Holiday Sweater Social with CASFM - December 2025
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August 2025 Technical Meeting
The August 13, 2025 technical meeting discussed PFAS—those “forever chemicals” making waves in environmental and regulatory circles. Dr. Conner Murray, Hazen and Sawyer’s national PFAS expert, broke down where PFAS come from, how they move through the environment, and what utilities are doing to remove them from our drinking water. We provided 1 PDH for attending!
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​​​November 2024 Technical Meeting​
The November 6, 2024 EWRI technical meeting featured Rick Koehler presenting on Enhanced Flow Duration Curves (eFDCs), a new method that adds autocorrelation analysis to traditional FDCs to reveal daily streamflow dynamics. This innovation enables visualization of changes in streamflow magnitude, frequency, and persistence, offering valuable insights for hydrologic modeling, restoration, and monitoring.
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June 2024 Technical Meeting​
Holly Piza gave a fantastic presentation to our members June of 2024. Make sure you follow our emails to attend our next event!
