Colorado Drinking Water Week, proclaimed by Governor Hickenlooper last week, underscored the importance of our state’s water and the infrastructure that future generations will depend upon to deliver water.

“Many communities – even those unaffected by the flooding – need to upgrade their aging systems to continue providing safe drinking water,” said the state’s press release on Drinking Water Week. “Rebuilding aging drinking water infrastructure … requires citizen support and careful planning by water system managers.”

The Southern Delivery System (SDS) water project was conceived some 20 years ago as a part of Colorado Springs Utilities’ Water Resource Plan. This critical new infrastructure will allow more water to be transported to Colorado Springs and its partners Security, Fountain and Pueblo West, but will also provide added reliability to an aging water system. Some Colorado Springs Utilities infrastructure is nearing 50 years old and SDS will provide another way to deliver water should there be an infrastructure failure or outage due to a disaster or routine maintenance. By the end of 2014, SDS construction will be about 75 percent complete.

Water planning is continuous and necessary to ensure our community has the water to meet residential and business needs.

As the wise Benjamin Franklin said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” Thanks to a strong record of good planning and now implementation of that plan, SDS will help keep the water flowing in southern Colorado.