Water providers urge Douglas County to ban high-water-use plants
A county draft would require landscape plans to identify irrigated turf and high-water-use plants, while allowing local water providers to impose stricter rules.
Castle Rock Water and Parker Water & Sanitation District are urging Douglas County to prohibit high-water-use plants in a draft landscaping update that currently would only discourage them.
The Douglas County staff packet says applicants would have to identify irrigated turf and high-water-use plant species in landscape plans submitted for county review. The water providers’ positions are recommendations, not changes already made to the county draft.
The proposal, identified as project DR2026-001, remained under review ahead of a scheduled Sept. 14 Planning Commission work session. It also would prohibit nonfunctional turf, nonfunctional artificial turf and invasive plant species in certain new development and redevelopment projects. Turf used for qualifying civic, community and recreational purposes would remain allowed, as would native plant species.
The draft would cover commercial, institutional and industrial properties; common-interest-community properties; street rights-of-way, parking lots, medians and transportation corridors; and multifamily properties with more than 12 dwelling units. A redevelopment project generally would be one requiring a permit, plan check or design review that disturbs more than half of the aggregate landscape area.
The draft also would allow local water providers to impose stricter landscaping requirements through their own regulations and during landscape-plan review. Staff revised the redevelopment definition after a request from Dominion Water and Sanitation District.
The proposal would amend Sections 27, 32 and 36 of the Douglas County Zoning Resolution. The Planning Commission was tentatively scheduled to consider the amendment Sept. 28, followed by Board of County Commissioners consideration Oct. 27. Those proceedings were scheduled, and the available record does not establish that the draft had been adopted.