Article Contributed on: 2/16/2009 8:49:58 AM
My time spent on the Douglas County Planning Commission combined with 35 years living near the Franktown subarea gives me a unique take on the current plans by Douglas County to sell water under the Hidden Mesa open space.
There are numerous planned developments and towns in the County which simply cannot grow until they acquire more water. This includes Lone Tree and much of the Hwy 105 corridor down to Perry Park area. Castle Rock and Parker real estate enthusiasts dream of both towns growing to over 100,000 each, Highlands Ranch aspires to 250,000 and little ol'Lone Tree wants to beat Jack in the Beanstalk by going vertical and high density. That's going to generate a lot of thirst to quench.
Even with the building of the Reuter-Hess reservoir, the parties involved have to conjure up massive sources of water because there is no water flowing into Frank Jaeger's Follly of a reservoir. The building of a pipeline down from northern Colorado to divert South Platte River water may eventually happen. But, those folks up there have a Hatfields and McCoys battle of their own going on between the farmers and the cities over water. Even if that ever gets resolved, the current economy might make it difficult to finance a billion dollar pipeline and Reuter-Hess is ready to receive water now.
Now, it so happens that Franktown sits on an abundant water supply. The hydro-geology of the area is unique because it is the headwaters of Cherry Creek, one of the major tributaries north of the Palmer Divide that feeds the South Platte River system. You might think there is just a trickle of water in Cherry Creek, but there is a virtual underground river and three huge aquifers below that. It is probably the "last-best-place" in Douglas County to drill a hole, put in a big straw, and fill Reuter-Hess. All those golf course planned developments approved by the county need to be kept green so as to keep selling those $100,000 lots to pilgrims arriving from the coastal areas.
The County staff and their minions know all of this, of course, and that is why they have put the kibash on any development in Franktown and why they came down hard on Chuck Quisenberry over his koi ponds. They want that water and they are going to have it. I suggest you view the old movie Chinatown, with Jack Nicholson, about water development in California and the Owens Valley, and you will begin to understand how nasty this can really get when the stakes are high. Remember, whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over.
The stakes are very high and the money lubricating the system knows no bounds. The continued population inmigration to Colorado and Douglas County's desirability as a place to live make it destination #1, for everyone,including the coyotes, prairie dogs and pot-bellied pigs. Real estate developers and retailers have flocked into our area with their carpet bags, because California, New York and Florida are now the worst places to develop real estate, creating a hydraulic force that few elected officials and planning commissions can resist.
My participation on another group, the Front Range 2050 Committee, leads me to believe that we are now experiencing some kind of
"neo-manifest destiny". The elected officials and administrative staff of Douglas County, always alert to opportunities to further their estate, now carry water for large developers and the south Denver business partnerships. To be surprised that this is nothing but politics and the exercise of brute force, blunt trauma power shows naivete.
In the end, there will be a linear city along the Front Range, spanning from Cheyenne to Pueblo of 8-10 million people. Water is the only resource keeping that from happening. Once the density in that linear city becomes great enough, growth will then move towards the Kansas line. If there are any major natural disasters, pandemics or biological or nuclear terrorist events on either of the U.S. coasts, you could see Colorado's population burgeon to 15 million people by 2050. I think it will happen; I just don't know the exact timing.
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"Commenting on Douglas County politics is like talking about the weather. It produces very little rain, but lots of wind."--An old timer in Douglas County.