Off Limits

Thirst for information: According to the first paragraph of a copyrighted story on the front page of Sunday's Denver Post, "John Afshar still remembers the day eight years ago when he went to turn on the kitchen faucet and nothing came out except a faint hissing sound." But few Post readers probably remembered a similar-sounding story in the November 1996 National Geographic: "John Afshar, a fireman, and his family woke up one winter morning in 1987 in their home in Braley Acres, south of Chatfield Reservoir in Douglas County, to discover that his account was overdrawn--his well had dried up."

And then, of course, there was the February 7, 1996, Westword story that first broke the news of Douglas County's declining aquifer, which focused on Afshar's neighbors--and netted reporter Stuart Steers a Best of the West award for growth-and-development reporting.