DRY COUNTY

Many people moving to Douglas County are buying homes outside the urban centers of Highlands Ranch, Castle Rock and Parker. That worries Boand, because it not only contributes to urban sprawl and the loss of open space, it also increases the likelihood of legal disputes over groundwater.

"We've got thousands of rural residents, each with their own well," Boand says. As urban development bumps up against rural homesteads, he predicts, trouble will ensue. "When you have four homes per acre next to these people with rural wells, that's when we'll have conflict."

Boand has noticed that some developers are now keeping the rights to water at the lowest levels of the aquifer when they sell property. Homeowners will have little choice but to buy those rights when water levels start to drop. In his hydrology consulting business, Boand refuses to work for any developer with less than a 250-year supply of groundwater. He says the next ten years will be crucial ones for Douglas County; if action isn't taken to find a permanent water supply, he's afraid the county will lurch into a crisis.

"We've thought about this for ten years and haven't come up with a solution," Boand says. "If we don't have water supplies lined up in the next decade, you have to fear the worst."

end of part 1