Page 14B—
COLORADO REAL ESTATE JOURNAL
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September 2-September 15, 2015
I
f Colorado expands to
8 or 9 million people
by midcentury, as
demographers say is possible,
changes certainly will occur in
how our land is used. Since the
current population hovers at
5.3 million, how would changes
not occur? While we may not
become New York City, a few
million more residents means
Colorado’s cities, suburbs and
country estates inevitably will
spill onto farms and pastures.
But how will they spill and
how will existing towns and
cities reinvent themselves?
Those are among the questions
as Colorado peers toward the
bottom of its water bucket,
trying to calculate how revised
land use can help bridge the
gap between water supplies
and expectations.
“Colorado cannot grow its
next 5 million people the way
it grew its first 5 million,” said
Jim Lochhead, chief executive
of Denver Water. “That’s the
challenge in a nutshell.”
The next 5 million people
will live in many places. The
largest proportionate increases
are expected in valleys of the
Western Slope. The larger
numeric growth, however, will
be along the Northern Front
Range, from Castle Rock to
Greeley and Fort Collins,
where an additional 2.5 million
people, roughly the existing
population of metropolitan
Denver and Boulder, could
make their homes by 2050,
according to high-growth
projections calculated by the
Colorado State Demography
Office.
Not only will that mean
new development, but also 75
percent of existing housing
along the Front Range could
be remodeled or replaced
by 2050, according to the
Brookings Institution. This
provides a golden opportunity
to rethink the way we grow in
Colorado.
Towns, cities and other
domestic and commercial
users account for less than 7
percent of the state’s water
use. Water to accommodate
millions of more people could
predominantly come from
farms or rivers, although there
are problems with both. Sales
of farm water, if profitable for
the seller, negatively affect
the operation of remaining
ditches and rural economies.
Mechanisms to allow an
expanded sharing economy
between farms and cities are
being explored, but with no
clear resolution.
As for diverting more water
from rivers, Colorado’s rivers
already are appropriated to the
extent that we bump up against
interstate compact limitations
on all except for the South
Platte River during winter
months and, somewhat more
ambiguously, the Colorado
River and its tributaries, the
source of 80 percent of the
state’s surface water. Because
the headwaters mostly are
tapped out, making additional
large-scale diversions from
the Colorado River Basin
would require transport across
several mountain ranges and
hundreds of miles to the
Front Range urban corridor.
Infrastructure costs would be
enormous, opposition would
be prickly and the long-term
availability would be uncertain.
This brings the conversation
back to conservation, and
how to do more with less. An
assortment of water-saving
activities have been embraced
and promoted by the state’s
water providers over recent
decades with much success.
However, state water planners
and environmental advocates
say one strategy remains largely
untapped, which is using
the mechanisms of land use
planning to build in water
efficiency at the outset of all
the forecasted new growth.
Land use planning has two
levels. First, there is the visioning
process, an assessment by a
town, city or county government
of how the land should be
used, often formalized by a
community’s comprehensive
plan. The resulting plan is
only as good as the regulations
created to implement it. This
usually comes in the form of
a municipal or county zoning
code and subdivision and site-
plan regulations. Finally, land
use planning and regulations
succeed only if sustained by
the decisions of elected and
appointed officials. They are,
at times, ignored, said Greg
Hoch, a community planner in
Durango.
In Colorado, as with other
states, land use planning and
water development often
are overseen by entirely
different agencies or local
governing boards. In 2008,
Colorado adopted a law
addressing a component of
this disconnection. House Bill
1141, concerning sufficient
water supplies for land use
approval, required that
building permit applications
for developments of more than
50 single-family equivalents
include specific evidence of an
adequate water supply. Local
governments, however, were
granted the sole authority for
determining what constitutes
“adequate.” As part of this
“show me the water” law,
consideration of conservation
and demand-management
measures, as well as hydrologic
variability, were explicitly
required.
But a disconnect between
water suppliers and land
use planners in many, if not
most, Colorado communities
has persisted. “You need
community comp[rehensive]
plans that say water use and
land use are connected,”
said Greg Fisher, manager of
demand planning for Denver
Water. Fisher predicts more
collaborative efforts between
Allen Best
Mountain Town News, Denver
