Sterling Ranch owners stewards of water

The concept of Agriburbia, embraced at the planned Sterling Ranch, among other things is to replace grass with gardens such as this one.

It was raining while I was writing this.

But as we all know, it doesn’t always rain in Colorado.  Adequate water increasingly is the most critical element of new housing development.

That was why it was such a delight to meet last week with the three principals of the planned 3,120-acre Sterling Ranch, west of Santa Fe Avenue at Titan Road in unincorporated Douglas County.

The principals have business creds.

Sterling Ranch is a family affair

Harold Smethills is the former president of Adolph Coors Co.’s spin-off ACX Technologies and CEO of Menasha Corp., a giant packaging company based in Wisconsin, his wife, Diane, and her brother, Jack Hoagland, are the land developers of this development. Hoagland is a former executive at Richmond American Homes and Carma Colorado.  Hoagland, who has generations of ranch-blood running through his veins, is the brother of Diane, who has 35 years of marketing, real estate development and finance experience.

Sterling Ranch will be the largest real-world  laboratory for saving water ever seen in Colorado.  I believe it will be a model for conserving water across the country.

Consider one aspect of virtually every aspect of virtually every home community in the country – green lawns.

Putting down roots, with little grass

“Grass lawns should be a throw rug, not a carpet,” Harold Smethills told me.

Rather than have a sea of water-hungry Kentucky Bluegrass in the 10,000 to 12,000 homes that eventually could be built in Sterling Ranch, the three principals envision homeowners donating their lawns to vegetable gardens.

“That is a trend that is not going away,” said Hoagland, who is an organic farmer and rancher, with spreads as far away as Oklahoma.

“If you just look at the carbon imprint of a can of tomatoes – from the time it is picked to every time it is touched before it ends up in a grocery aisle, it is pretty amazing,” he said.

The transportation impact on the environment will be totally eliminated at Sterling Ranch. Imagine people growing their own tomatoes, cucumbers and other vegetables, sold at neighborhood farmer markets at Sterling Ranch, free of pesticide, using infrastructure that scientifically uses water extremely efficient.

Agriburbia embraced

The principals have embraced a concept called “Agriburbia,” a trade-marked term by the Golden-based TSR Group, a design and sustainable development management firm.

The idea behind Agriburbia is to combine positive social, cultural, physical and financial characteristics from urban and rural lifestyles to create a new land-use concept.

“It is about re-thinking and re-defining how we use land and water and how and where we grow food – and it touches on all the other resources and components of 21st century land development,” according to the firm.

You will not see the sprinkler systems spewing water over sidewalks and into streets, as you do on virtually any Denver street, when the first homes are built at Sterling Ranch over the next few years.  One surprising finding from a coalition of experts, he said, is that the drip systems work best during the hottest part of the day, while sprinklers, of course, should be used late at night or early.

Also, thanks to new legislation that they lobbied for and signed by Gov. Bill Ritter in June, people in Colorado can now harvest rainwater, which you couldn’t do before.

“In the past, you couldn’t legally buy rain barrels, and now they’re flying off the shelf at Home Depot and Lowe’s,” Smethills said.

Neighbors share water

Ten percent of the water they get from the Platte River will be available to neighbors, who depend on aquifers that are running dry. They will sell them the water at the market price, and will take neither a profit nor a loss on the water.

“If our neighbors don’t succeed, we won’t succeed,” Smethills said.

All told, they anticipate Sterling Ranch will use 50 percent less water than a typical community this size. I’m betting they are going to exceed that goal and this will put Colorado on the map for saving water and using it wisely. One thing they are researching is technology that would allow them to “re-charge” the Platte River with water during normal and wet months, so there will be plenty of water available during droughts.

I’d also wager that Sterling Ranch could bring new meaning to “gentleman (and gentlewoman) farmer.”

Hoagland note that a lot of the concepts at Sterling Ranch  – living off the land, sharing locally grown food and being good stewards of the precious water – are aspects of life that rural farmers took for granted.

“It’s really back to the future,” Smethills said.

Contact John Rebchook at JRCHOOK@gmail.com or 303-945-6865

Share this: