Louviers water system returns to compliance after radium fix

Louviers residents have lived with a radium problem in their drinking water since 2020, but the smallest community in Douglas County is now back in full compliance. State regulators closed out the enforcement order after the Louviers Water and Sanitation District produced four straight quarters of acceptable results and brought its treatment system online.

The turnaround came from a new ion-exchange facility that began construction in June 2024 and was fully operational by October 2025. District updates said two quarters of test results already showed treated water below the combined radium limit, and that the new system was treating the water delivered to homes. For households on Louviers’ roughly 113 taps, the change means the water coming out of the tap now meets state standards after years of concern.

The work was financed through a patchwork of public support that the district could not have assembled on its own. Louviers’ water system relies on mill levies, service fees and tap sales, but its tiny customer base makes major upgrades difficult. Douglas County provided the lion’s share of funding through ARPA allocations, with additional help from Colorado small-community water grants and federal assistance through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s WIIN grant program. A February 2024 district notice said none of the project costs would be passed on to Louviers residents.

Louviers Water and Sanitation District leaders have said the effort was necessary because the community’s water plant had to be modernized to protect drinking water safety. The district board, elected by townspeople, is led by president Matthew Collitt, with Beca Connet serving as treasurer and Nick Pepping, Jake Kennedy and Vince Guerrie as board members. The district’s website says that local governance and limited revenue are part of what make major infrastructure projects so hard for a place this small.

The radium fix is not the end of Louviers’ water work. County documents say the next priorities are replacing aging water lines and establishing an emergency water connection with a neighboring utility to improve firefighting capacity and resilience during emergencies. Douglas County has already approved a $1 million federal award for the Louviers Water and Sanitation District Drinking Water Distribution Replacement project, which would replace about 12,000 feet of galvanized steel pipe, 86 service lines and 15 fire hydrants.

That matters in a town whose infrastructure dates to the early 1900s and whose roots go back to its founding as a Du Pont company town in 1906 to 1908. In Louviers, the compliance ruling is more than a paperwork milestone. It is a public-health win that finally brings safer water to a historic community still working to catch up with its aging pipes.