LABOR DAYthe Denver Water way

Employees work 24/7, 365 to keep the water flowing.

Cross connection technicians Eddie McCarthy and Mike Leone (pictured here) install a temporary valve to tap into our system and provide treated water at Civic Center Park throughout the holiday weekend.

Taste of Colorado visitors will be able to cleanse their palettes between snack samples and stay hydrated with the best-tasting water in town.

Heath Stuerke (pictured right), caretaker and hydro supervisor at Strontia Springs Reservoir, does a lot of work in, on and around Strontia’s dam. Caretakers work — and live — at our mountain facilities across the state where we collect, store and manage water.

Their responsibilities — which include watching over canals, diversion dams, conduits, streams, hydroelectric plants and more — don’t take days off.

Staff at our four treatment plants work the most when customers are working the least, since demand is highest when people are at home.

Each plant — three for drinking water and one for recycled water — has staff (such as Zack Alabbasi, Moffat plant manager, pictured right) on hand 24/7 to monitor the treatment process and run lab tests to ensure the water we deliver meets or surpasses all federal and state standards.

John Carrigan (pictured right) and fellow Systems Operations team members remotely monitor our complex distribution system, from pump stations to pressure zones to more than 3,000 miles of pipe.

Operators can make tweaks — opening a valve here, stopping a pump there — to ensure each of the 1.4 million people we serve has proper water pressure.

And since more than a million alarms can sound within a year to alert operators to potential real-time problems, we can expect at least a few to come in on Labor Day.

It takes a skilled team to support the structural integrity of our water system 24/7.

Denver Water has a team of 10 welders, including Sean Gandolfo (pictured right), on call around-the-clock to repair valves and metal structures across our system and ensure equipment is operational.

Mains will burst when they want to, holidays and gamedays (such as the August 2014 break at Coors Field, pictured here) be darned.

With pipes more than a century old, it’s inevitable something in our system will crack. More often than not, our dispatchers must call our crews to make emergency repairs at inopportune places and times.

There’s more to a main break than an emergency repair.

Secondary responders include Corrosion Control, who arrive to study a problem pipe and figure out what caused the break.

And Water Quality Operations will send investigators (such as Bruce Dahm, pictured right) to the scene of the break to ensure the new pipe is clean and water is safe to drink.

Steve Crozier (pictured right) and the rest of the electrician team at Denver Water literally keep the power on.

The electrician shop is on call 24/7, responding to the electrical needs of Denver Water’s treatment plants, pump stations, reservoirs and offices 365 days a year.

Whether responding to main breaks, providing water to fight fires or performing tasks that can’t skip a day, we have many employees (such as safety specialist John Baker, pictured far right) who cover shifts 24/7 to ensure our customers have reliable service and high-quality water.

Whether it’s out of the tap or sailing on Dillon Reservoir, we hope you enjoy water this weekend — whether you’re laboring or not.