The U.S. Forest Service received more than 500 comments, mainly in opposition, to a proposal by the cities of Aurora and Colorado Springs to drill bore holes to determine the feasibility of a second reservoir in the Homestake Creek drainage.

The current forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Colorado River Basin Forecast Center estimates as of May 11 that there is 146,000 acre-feet of water — in the form of snowmelt — that will flow into Dillon Reservoir through July 31.

Officials say water should be the least of anyone’s concerns during the growing outbreak, which has prompted an unprecedented statewide stay-at-home order and has seen most nonessential businesses and schools shut down.

“This is a revelation. We can definitely say that cloud seeding enhances snowfall under the right conditions,” said Sarah Tessendorf, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder and co-author of a new paper on the research conducted by scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder and University of Wyoming, among others.

Her frustration, in many ways, matches that of local and state government officials who say for years they’ve felt they don’t have the tools or the regulatory teeth to get the park’s owners to improve the water, despite legislation aimed at enforcing mobile-home park regulations passed last year.

The well water at Eagle River Village is regularly tested and in compliance with the Federal Safe Drinking Water Act as administered by the Water Quality Control Division of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, but sodium levels are still high, making the water taste salty and leading residents to buy bottled drinking water.