Artificial turf in Fort Collins.

Ordinance No. 008, 2025, took effect on February 14, 2025. Its Section 5.10.1 says no artificial turf or artificial plants may be included in any landscape plan or installed, and the Director may make an exception only for an athletic field of play.

The same section’s applicability clause leaves out development on existing lots for single- and two-unit detached dwellings and accessory dwelling units. That clause is what lets a homeowner replace an existing backyard lawn with turf, and it is why the ban lands on new subdivisions, multifamily and commercial landscape plans instead.

When Council reviewed the standards in January 2023, it did not support synthetic turf, citing the potential for PFAS to leach into waterways. An October 2023 draft capped high-water live turfgrass in single-unit front yards; that cap was about live grass, not artificial turf, and the adopted ordinance instead limits high-water turfgrass to recreation, civic and community areas in the developments it covers.

Fort Collins City Code bars covenants that limit xeriscape landscaping, but Section 12-120 defines xeriscape to exclude artificial turf or plants. A Fort Collins HOA can’t enforce a covenant that prohibits or limits xeriscape or that requires part of a lot to be turf grass, but a homeowner can’t use that section to insist on artificial turf.

Since January 1, 2026, Colorado also bars anyone from installing artificial turf with intentionally added PFAS chemicals, the concern Council raised in 2023.

Fort Collins Utilities serves most of the city and charges a single-family home a $23.10 monthly base plus $3.574 per 1,000 gallons for the first 7,000 gallons, $4.109 up to 13,000 and $4.726 above that in 2026.

In its area, which starts south of Harmony Road, Fort Collins-Loveland Water District bills most of its homes a $25.54 base plus $2.99 per 1,000 gallons up to 5,000, climbing by tier to $6.83 above 50,000. Taps that fall under the City of Fort Collins IGA, which may include Fossil Lake, Linden Park, Sage Creek, Harvest Park and Westchase, pay $5.04 to $11.50 across the same tiers.

North and east of the city, East Larimer County Water District doesn’t publish its per-gallon residential rates; it adds a conservation charge of $5.61 per 1,000 gallons once a home passes an annual allotment set by lot size. North Weld County Water District also reaches some eastern neighborhoods.

Fort Collins Utilities pays homeowners $0.75 per square foot, up to 1,000 square feet or $750, for renovations that reach 50% plant coverage at maturity. The program page names no artificial-turf rule either way, and Resource Central’s lawn-replacement program, also offered through Fort Collins Utilities, requires the replaced area to be at least half waterwise plants.

If a yard mixes the two, ask Utilities how it will draw the renovation area before you commit to a layout.

The city declared a voluntary Water Shortage Watch effective May 1, 2026, asking residents to water lawns no more than 2 days a week and not between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. Fort Collins-Loveland Water District followed the city’s plan and says its 2026 outdoor watering season has ended, and ELCO issued voluntary recommendations of its own.

Soil surveys around central Fort Collins map mostly Fort Collins loam and Nunn clay loam, with high shrink-swell Nunn clay loam covering about 17% of the area sampled. The Colorado Geological Survey calls expansive soil the state’s most significant geologic hazard, with clays that can swell up to 20% by volume when wet.

The city’s NOAA station averages 51.4 inches of snow and 150 nights at or below freezing a year, against 29.5 days at or above 90°F (1991–2020 normals). The largest hail NOAA logged at its Fort Collins reference point from 2011 through 2025 was 1.75 inches, on June 19, 2018.