Hazards in the water for Colorado

More than 150,000 people in Colorado drank from water supplies last year that violated public health standards.

Nearly all these problems occurred in small communities and water districts, which have been struggling with new federal rules and aging distribution systems.

In 2008, a salmonella epidemic hit a water supply with decaying infrastructure, squirrels found their way into another drinking-water storage tank and died, and live birds fouled another. In one town, people defiantly drank unfiltered water from a stream despite state orders to boil their water since last spring.

Year by year, the price to fix Colorado's drinking-water infrastructure keeps climbing. Pending requests for state help to improve water systems have ballooned from $800 million to $1.3 billion since 2005. Forty-eight of these projects, totaling $143 million, would treat water supplies posing acute or chronic health hazards.

Louise Malouff's 6-year-old son was among the children treated in emergency rooms after a pollutant — salmonella bacteria — invaded Alamosa's water supply.

As they waited for hours, he kept vomiting and passing bloody diarrhea. "He was lying on the floor like a puppy," she said. "He asked me, 'Mom, if I'm losing all my blood, am I going to die?' It just broke my heart."

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