Colorado Real Estate Journal - September 2, 2015
If 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 land use and water planners in the next few years. It is clearly just the beginning of the land use and water planning conversation. The Keystone Policy Center also is trying to move the conversation along through its Colorado water and growth dialogue program. Since early 2014, the dialogue has convened meetings of 25 individuals from the land and water planning fields as well as economic development organizations. The purpose is to identify land use patterns and incentives that will save water and still deliver housing products that consumers find attractive, said Matthew Mulica of the Keystone Center, who is leading the effort. Having actual, comparable data about growth and its water use implications could help overcome some of the disconnect between water providers and planning departments. Mulica points to the central reality that Colorado has a zero-sum water game. “We are going to have to set some priorities and make some choices, and do it in smart, strategic ways,” said Mulica. For more information, visit the Colorado Foundation for Water Education website and Headwaters magazine at www.yourwatercolorado.org