Denver Water’s 1.5 million customers must shut off their lawn sprinklers at the start of October as Colorado’s largest water utility grapples with record-setting heat and drought. The utility’s Board of Water Commissioners on Wednesday voted unanimously to impose the ban, which goes into effect Oct. 1. The new rule adds to drought restrictions in place since spring as Denver Water has attempted to rein in water use. … Denver Water’s drought rules follow a winter with little snow and an abnormally hot and dry summer. Low snowpack reduced streamflows into Denver Water’s reservoirs to less than a quarter of normal, and extreme drought continues to fry the mountains from which the utility draws its water. The dry, hot summer — the warmest on record for metro Denver — has not offered relief.

Other drought impact and response news:

• The Colorado Sun: Denver Water approves Oct. 1 ban on lawn watering, threatening fines
• The Daily Sentinel (Grand Junction, Colo.): Seeing drought impacts, city asks residents to keep watering trees
• CBS Colorado: Some Denver Water users feel restrictions are creating division among neighbors
• Steamboat Pilot & Today (Steamboat Springs, Colo.): Rare Yampa River call curtails junior water rights amid historic drought
• KVPR (Clovis, Calif.): Agave is taking root on California farms. Valley schools are now studying it.
• Time: We asked experts for the easiest ways to shrink your home water usage