It's been a while now since I wrote about living next to Lake Imagination, the 11 acre, aquifer filled, private, man-made, slap in the face, BS little water playground for some of my neighbors.

I'm thinking it is probably frozen over enough now for a little hockey but that's just a pipe dream, since commoners like me aren't allowed over there. At least the sound of motorboats doing circles has been quieted, a sound I don't really mind because it takes me back to growing up in Michigan.

Of course, odds are if you hear a motorboat in Michigan it is because you are either in or on the lake yourself, not sitting on the other side of a fence sprinkling rainwater on your peppers. Illegal rainwater, by the way, because technically I am breaking the law by saving it as it runs off my roof and into my gutters and into the 5 gallon buckets I use to hold it.

It irritates me beyond belief that in a state where it is illegal to collect rainwater for the garden a developer can construct a man-made lake and fill it with non-renewable aquifer water. And that other people buy into it. And bring their motorboats and putt around in circles on it.

The other day I was at a home near Castle Rock, pruning the trees and doing some fire mitigation on the native scrub oak. It was a beautiful place, nicely landscaped to look like a mountain getaway, with aspens, fir and spruce trees, and a nice lawn.

The whole scene was entirely artificial, and entirely dependent on non-renewable aquifer water pumped up and pushed through sprinklers. Turn off the water and it would all wither away.

So now we have the Douglas County Water Resource Authority (DCWRA), the Douglas County government, the Douglas County School District, and the Water Awareness and Responsibility Program (WARP, which I think is an awesome abbreviation) all getting together to try to teach kids about water use. That's enough entities and titles to make a simple guy like me want to run for cover, let me tell ya.

I hope it works. I really do. I mean, educating the kids is great. I have my doubts but I sincerely hope I am wrong.

Maybe some of those kids will go home and tell their parents how messed up green lawns and spruce trees in the yard are in this environment.

Take a drive some summer day through Founder's Village, or The Meadows, or Castle Pines North, or any of the other disasters we proudly call developments around here, and this is what you'll see; row upon row of over sized houses on undersized lots with green lawns and trees and a Chemlawn or Tru-Green truck out front spraying god-knows-what so that everybody's place can look JUST SO.

Perfect little landscapes with perfect little lawns all existing in an environment that is naturally absolutely nothing like that.

If you know when to look, from I-25 you can see the new reservoir going in east of Castle Pines North. There's all sorts of complicated ways devised to bring in and share water from this thing. Lots of money and time and resources have been put into it, and maybe someday we can actually putt around on it in our motorboats. I hope so. I'm tired of my neighbors having all the fun.

Building a reservoir in a place with almost no natural drainage to fill it seems odd to me, but hey, I'm a pretty simple guy.

Speaking of Castle Pines North, I'm wondering about their plans to build another subdivision so they can (you guessed it) afford to develop more water projects. Talk about one step forward and two steps back. Depending on more growth to support previous growth seems a little odd to me, but like I said, I'm a pretty simple guy.

You want to get people thinking about water conservation? Forget all the entities creating all sorts of programs and slapping each other on the back. Forget about building reservoirs in places that are dry as a bone. Forget about building more subdivisions in hopes of getting more money to drill more wells deeper and deeper.

You want to get people thinking about water conservation? Jack the price of turning on the spigot up about 300 percent. That'll do it. And when they come screaming explain to them (patiently I might add) WATER IS A PRECIOUS COMMODITY HEREABOUTS!

And then give them one of those glossy brochures on xeriscape (a concept I love and a name I can't stand, by the way)we've already paid for with our tax dollars. And then you can forget about all those fancy entities and programs and just let mommy and daddy tell little Jimmy and Susie why they're ripping out the lawn.

Oh yeah, and make it legal to collect rainwater. It has been proven to have no appreciable effect on downstream supplies, which was the point of the original law. So make it legal and encourage people to do it.

And one more thing. Outlaw any more future Lake Imaginations, grandfathered-in water rights or not. What a waste and what a sham.