Manitou Springs schools reopened Wednesday after closing because of the city’s emergency water shortage. 

The district was closed Tuesday as the city attempted to conserve limited potable water. In a statement on the district’s website, district Superintendent Sean Dorsey said that he was “pleased to report encouraging developments” in the city’s efforts to treat the water supply. 

The city began asking residents and businesses to stop all but essential water uses Monday. According to the announcements, the city’s water supply reached high levels of turbidity that could not be filtered at the water plant. Turbidity is a term for the cloudy visual effect of suspended debris in water. 

Turbidity defined

A water supply pipeline owned by Colorado Springs Utilities can usually supply Manitou Springs’ water in case of an emergency, but that pipeline is under repair, according to a Utilities spokesperson. 

Tuesday night, John Ewell with the Manitou Springs Water Treatment Plant told City Council in a work session update that the city had made progress in treating more water for storage despite turbidity issues. 

He said that Tuesday’s operations had resulted in 275,000 gallons treated so far, compared to 150,000 gallons treated on Monday. He also said that the plant was still running as of 6 p.m., compared to a 3:30 p.m. stop due to turbidity issues Monday. 

“Today’s been better progress than we made yesterday,” he said. 

Still, he said that turbidity becomes more of an issue as the day warms and runoff from the city’s watershed source increases. 

On Wednesday, the city released a statement saying that the plant ran for a full 12 hours Tuesday, resulting in about 320,000 gallons treated in total. The previous four days, the plant was only able to run for about eight hours a day, according to the release. 

The statement said that water quality has “stabilized slightly,” thanks to reduced runoff and improving turbidity levels. 

Ewell said that Utilities personnel have assisted the plant with analysis to “dial in” the plant’s operations. He said he hoped for a Friday fix on the Utilities pipeline. 

“We’re going to just hope to get through to Friday when this interconnect will hopefully be fixed, and if we can get on that we should be in business.” 

Meanwhile, Manitou Springs is still under water restrictions. The Wednesday statement called on residents and businesses to continue to refrain from all nonessential water uses, though “brief, infrequent” showers were allowed along with dishwashing necessary for sanitation. 

‘We want to do what’s best’: Manitou Springs businesses, residents respond to water restrictions

The statement said that all 320,000 gallons treated Tuesday were used by the city, but that on the same date last year, the city used about 553,000 gallons. 

“The City extends its deep appreciation to all residents and businesses for helping reduce consumption under these challenging conditions,” read the statement. 

Manitou Springs’ storage tanks are currently at about 50% capacity, according to the statement. 

“We still need to conserve, conserve, conserve,” said City Administrator Denise Howell at the work session. “Please don’t use water.”