Colorado water law bans homeowners from filling their outdoor hot tubs using water from some household wells; so people are buying it at WalMarts

Some owners of exotic Colorado mountain retreats are shopping WalMart these days – for water for their outdoor hot tubs.

A report in the Denver Post documents the problems for homeowners in the ritzy Breckenridge resort area, where more than 200 warnings have been issued to residents in recent weeks.

Scott Hummer, a water commissioner, said Colorado law limits the use of water from most residential water wells to indoor use, and hot tubs on decks don't qualify.

"We decided to go to WalMart and just buy the water," Sandy Kucharczyk told the newspaper. She and her husband brought almost 200 one-gallon jugs home.

In a state blanketed by wintertime snow sometimes measured in yards, not just inches or feet, why the limit?

Hummer said it's because the water already is claimed, sometimes by cities, farms and ranches with water "rights" that date back into the 1800s. Water from Colorado irrigates Nebraska farmland and fills water jugs in Los Angeles.

"If you're using outside the terms and conditions of your permit, you're literally stealing someone else's water," Hummer told newspaper reporter Steve Lipsher.

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In Summit County, the issue became a problem because water pumped from the roughly 4,000 "household only" wells otherwise would end up in the Blue River, which runs into one of Denver's mountain water reservoirs.

Hummer reported illegal usage at about half of the 500 homes he visited, including sprinkler systems for sod, ornamental ponds, outdoor car-washing, and outdoor hot tubs.

The warnings have generated some creative responses, including one from Chris Mendrick, who installed a faucet inside his garage so he can wash his car indoors, a legal usage.

Hot tub owners also have been hitting the campgrounds, where they fill their motor home tanks to haul water home to their tubs.

Mendrick initially wanted to install a cistern, to collect water from rain. "They told me we couldn't do that either because every raindrop and snowflake that falls is someone else's," he told the newspaper.

State law allows wells when new homes are properly permitted and built, but the restrictions ban even the watering of a potted plant on a porch.

Water delivery businesses also have been booming. "The day after the crackdown, I got a ton of calls," said the owner of Water Boy Inc.

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