Lead Service Line Inventory

This spring, as part of the City of Golden’s efforts to ensure safe, high quality drinking water, the City began the process of determining customer-owned service line materials. This is required by revisions to the Safe Drinking Water Act’s Lead and Copper Rule. The project began with the City’s water utility reaching out to residents with homes built before 1940 to start gathering information on their service line material. If you have received a survey by mail from the City of Golden, please complete and return it at your earliest convenience.

If your home was built before 1940 and you take steps to identify your service line material, please contact Utilities Superintendent Les Major at lmajor@cityofgolden.net or by phone at 303-384-8170 with your service line information. Your assistance will help us develop a complete and accurate service line inventory, an important first step in eliminating lead service lines in our community. Learn more at www.guidinggolden. com/lead-service-line-inventory.

Fall Lawn Care

With the cooler temperatures and shorter days of fall right around the corner, it's a good time to plan ahead and prepare your grass for the winter. Fertilizing in the early fall promotes healthy root systems and more resilient landscapes. Fall is an important time to put a little energy and care into your lawn's health - and next summer, you should see the benefits.

The two most important things to do to your lawn in the fall while it's still green are 1) to aerate and 2) to provide it with some nutrients.

Aeration improves your yard's ability to absorb water and nutrients. Before starting, make sure to mark your sprinkler heads so you avoid running over them and causing damage. Often, you can rent core aerators at home improvement stores to get the job done.

Adding nutrients to your lawn is another simple yet important task. While it’s advised to test your soil first, plant experts from Colorado State University generally recommend a fall application of fertilizer high in Nitrogen (e.g., 25-5-5) for cool-season grasses. Apply this type of fertilizer a few weeks before temperatures are supposed to reach freezing. The main caution is to not add too much, which can result in damaging your grass and polluting local watersheds. Follow directions on the package, and your yard should benefit. Nitrogen application can often be reduced by 1/4 to 1/3 when grass clippings are returned to the lawn during mowing. Nitrogen and other nutrients contained in the clippings are recycled into the lawn as they decompose. Grass clippings do not contribute to thatch accumulation in lawns.

If you're wondering whether it might be simpler to just leave fallen leaves on your yard, be warned that too thick of a layer of leaves can be suffocating! However, a thin layer of leaves, particularly if they've been chopped up by a mower, can add nutrients back into your landscape and can be used to mulch around flower beds, shrubs, and trees.