There are many cheap, fast, and easy steps that individuals, municipalities, and water providers can take to conserve, protect, and restore Colorado's rivers and streams.

Conserve
One of the best ways we can ensure the continuing health of our water supplies is by making sure that individuals, municipalities, and farmers and ranchers are making strides in being more efficient with their water use. We can all help conserve by implementing just a few simple steps:

• Save up to five gallons per minute in your home by installing efficient showerheads and faucets. You can be conscious of limiting your time in the shower, and work to make every drop you use count.
• Update your toilets and save thousands of gallons of water a year. Test for leaks in your toilet tank by adding a few drops of food coloring to the water in the tank – wait five minutes and check the water in the bowl -- if there’s food coloring present you have a leak. Fix leaks with new hardware in the tank of your toilet. Not only will you save water, you will save money, too!
• Go to www.coloradowaterwise.org for more water-saving tips
• Check with your local government; you may qualify for rebate programs offered when you update your toilet or appliances.  To see if you may qualify for rebates, click here.
• Find out how much you really need to water your lawn and garden outdoors – current estimates of summer water use indicate that about 60% of summer water consumption goes to outdoor uses. Learn what type of plants and grass are in your yard and find out just how much you actually need to water them. Go to http://www.watersaver.org/ for more information.
• Program you sprinklers to water your lawn efficiently. Many cities can perform sprinkler audits to ensure that your system is working properly and efficiently, saving water and money in your monthly bills. For a list of certified Irrigation Auditors, click here.
• Xeriscape your yard by minimizing grass and turf and maximizing drought tolerant plants, make sure you always group plants together by their water needs, maximizing your watering time and keeping your yard looking great! Go to www.xeriscape.org for more information.

Protect
The natural beauty and bounty of Colorado depends on the health of our rivers; in order to preserve the unique scenery and recreational opportunities that abound in our state, we must protect the waterways that make up such a crucial part of these landscapes.

Things we can do:

• Apply "Smart Water" principles: make full and efficient use of our current water supplies, encourage water sharing between users, and increase water efficiency. Read more in Facing Our Future: A Balanced Water Solution for Colorado, a report released in 2005 by CEC (along with our partners Western Resource Advocates and Trout Unlimited), which lays out the Colorado conservation community’s vision for meeting Front Range water demands over the next 25 years without harming the state's rivers.
• Involve all interests and individuals in future water planning to ensure that projects adequately mitigate environmental and economic impacts.
• Work to prevent the need for large, costly and time consuming dam projects that disturb wildlife, adversely affect our water quality, and change the natural hydrology of our rivers by creating sedimentation build-up.

Restore
Many Colorado rivers show significant signs of human impact. In order to restore our damaged rivers, we must keep adequate flows in our waterways to sustain ecosystems and provide continuing recreation opportunities that support local economies and communities.

Things we can do:

• Organize river clean-ups to restore riparian ecosystems.
• Ensure that existing water projects provide adequate river flows.
• Require new projects to operate in a way that mimics the natural flow of the river.
• Promote a stronger state instream flow program under which the state purchases or leases water flows needed to make rivers healthy.