Now, state legislators are working on a bill that would protect private ponds used by firefighters as water sources, as the state engineer cracks down on private ponds that store water meant to travel to downstream users who have water rights.

Ben Mulligan, the fire chief of the Platte Canyon Fire Protection District, said he first started to notice local ponds drying up long before he was fire chief. As he was promoted, he learned many of those ponds that his department used to draft water into trucks to fight fires in hard to reach places had been drained as they violated Colorado’s water law.