High Country Advocate Staff Report
A Chaffee County property owner told commissioners December 4 that he can’t make plans for his 37 acres because “everything changes on a weekly basis.”
“I feel I’m being pushed out with all the regulations,” he said during public comment, “and really it looks like someone’s just going to come in and scoop that property up.”
The property owner—a single father who’s held his land for ten years—had woken at 1 a.m. reading about water law. He brought the Colorado Sun’s morning article to commissioners’ attention: “First-of-a-kind rules to protect Colorado streams, wetlands face final hearing.”
Those rules—Regulation 87—go before the Water Quality Control Commission December 8-10 in Denver. The Chaffee resident mentioned a wetland on his property adjacent to a ditch. That detail matters. The definition of “adjacent wetlands” has become the flashpoint in final negotiations, with Senator Barbara Kirkmeyer calling the proposed language “an attack on rural Colorado.”
HB 24-1379, signed May 2024, established Colorado’s dredge and fill program after the Supreme Court’s Sackett v. EPA decision stripped federal protections from seasonal streams and wetlands. The law exempted wetlands “adjacent to a ditch or canal and supported by water in the adjacent ditch or canal.”
State health officials tightened those definitions in draft rules. Per the December 1 Statement of Basis and Purpose, “adjacent to” now means the wetland must have “a continuous surface or shallow subsurface water connection” to the ditch, and must “not exist but for water from the ditch or canal.”
Kirkmeyer, a Brighton Republican and key bill sponsor, objected in a November 18 letter: the proposal “is not consistent with the legislative intent” of the law she helped write. Stuart Gillespie, an Earthjustice attorney, told the Colorado Sun tighter definitions provide “clarity.”
For property owners, clarity means another regulatory layer—with a familiar agency at its center.
Regulation 87 Section 87.5 mandates Colorado Parks and Wildlife consultation on any application affecting aquatic resources. CPW already shapes what property owners can do through land use codes. Chaffee County’s new code—adopted November 19, 2024—created “high quality wildlife habitat” zones requiring 300-foot setbacks based on CPW mapping. Property owners received no individual notice of the designation.
Jed Selby, whose family owns 277 acres near Buena Vista, documented the impact in a July 2025 letter. The new code eliminated his ability to propose a resort, hotel, or amphitheater—uses previously allowed. His land received the habitat designation despite being “sandwiched between developed property on all sides, adjacent to a golf course and town boundaries.”
“No one came and discussed the change with us,” Selby wrote.
Under Regulation 87, Selby would need CPW consultation for any dredge or fill activity affecting streams or wetlands—the same agency whose habitat maps already restrict his options. Section 87.10 establishes compensatory mitigation for unavoidable impacts: when regulations make some disturbance inevitable, property owners pay into mitigation banks. Those banks are often operated by conservation organizations—the same groups that advocated for the restrictions.
The Colorado Sun framed December 8 as environmental groups versus industry interests fighting over definitions. But the Chaffee property owner isn’t industry. He’s not a developer or mining company. He’s a single father with 37 acres who’s been “on protection defense for 10 years.”
“I really feel I can do some beneficial things and really help the community, help myself,” he told commissioners. “We can compromise on a lot of these things and have some great benefits.”
Commissioner P.T. Wood acknowledged the pressure. Returning from the Colorado Counties Incorporated conference, he noted “the intersection of land use and housing and water” dominated discussions, along with “unfunded mandates” that “squeeze our community.”
The squeeze comes from multiple directions—land use codes, wildlife habitat designations, stream setbacks, wetland definitions—but the mechanisms share a pattern. Regulations restrict activity on private land. Restrictions create unavoidable impacts requiring mitigation. Mitigation payments flow to organizations that advocated for the restrictions. Property owners who can’t navigate the complexity or afford the consultants sell to those who can.
The Water Quality Control Commission meets December 8-10 to finalize Regulation 87, effective February 2026. For rural property owners already constrained by land use codes, it represents one more layer in a system where the rules keep changing but the outcome stays the same.
Water Quality Control Commission hearing: December 8-10, CDPHE Denver. Draft regulation and Statement of Basis and Purpose available in commission public documents.
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