Trinidad Water Festival teaches students why water is life

With drought covering every resident of Las Animas County, Trinidad State College spent Tuesday teaching more than 1,000 students how fragile the region’s water supply can be. The 13th Annual Trinidad Water Festival turned the campus into a hands-on classroom built around a simple local reality: in southeastern Colorado, water is not an abstraction. It is what keeps homes supplied, fields productive and communities prepared for wildfire and other hazards.

The festival, held May 21, 2025, carried the motto Agua es Vida and brought together kindergarten through 12th grade students for an outdoor experience that mixed science, conservation and daily-life lessons. The Purgatoire Valley Foundation says the event has been held each May at Trinidad State College since 2012 and is designed around youth, education and the environment. Trinidad State College, founded in 1925, says it has served southern Colorado and beyond from its Trinidad and Alamosa campuses for a century.

That local focus matters in Las Animas County, where drought, wildfire, floods, winter storms and hail all show up in hazard planning. Drought.gov says 15,507 people in the county are affected by drought, a reminder that the festival’s lessons are tied to immediate conditions, not distant policy debates. The North Fork of the Purgatoire River watershed supplies water to Trinidad and almost 85% of Las Animas County residents, making watershed health a daily issue for the city and the county alike.

Water Festival workshops have long centered on practical topics such as water conservation, water quality and water distribution systems. Earlier festival descriptions said presenters were meant to be educational, interactive and fun, and over the years the event has drawn area fire departments, Las Animas County Road and Bridge and the Trinidad History Museum. The format is deliberate: it gives students a chance to see how the region’s water system works before those lessons become a crisis.

This year also marked the first appearance of soldiers from Fort Carson’s 68th Division Sustainment Support Battalion. They demonstrated a Tactical Water Purification System, showing students how contaminated water can be turned into drinkable water. In a county that depends heavily on the Purgatoire watershed, that demonstration connected emergency readiness to everyday conservation.

The Purgatoire River Water Conservancy District, created in 1960, manages water distribution for agricultural and municipal uses, another sign of how closely the county’s economy and household life remain linked to the river. The festival’s message was plain: in Las Animas County, water literacy is part of community survival.