Sterling Ranch

Context 

Water conservation has been a top priority since the husband-and-wife development team, Diane and Harold Smethills, conceived their vision for the community more than 15 years ago. Groundwater, the main resource enabling development in Douglas County, was not readily available for Sterling Ranch when the Smethills began planning, which afforded them unique opportunities to explore novel infrastructure and conservation strategies not in use elsewhere in the Denver metropolitan area. Drought resilience is top of mind in Colorado, which has experienced severe drought conditions for more than two decades,172 and as of December 2021, had more than 200 straight days without rain.

Sterling Ranch in Douglas County, Colorado. (Sterling Ranch)

Sterling Ranch will eventually include about 12,050 homes for 30,000 residents across nine distinct neighborhood villages. Since the first home closed in 2017, the development has opened three of the nine planned villages with 1,400 occupied homes, over 3,000 residential lots sold, and more than 3,000 current residents. The total project cost of buildout is estimated at over $5 billion.

Water-Smart Strategies

Rainwater harvesting

Sterling Ranch is Colorado’s first and only municipal-scale rainwater harvesting pilot site project, with goals of sourcing over 70 percent of its water from renewable sources, like rainwater and snowmelt, and not groundwater. Dominion Water Sanitation District manages the community’s wholesale water and wastewater, and is part of a broader regional coalition called the WISE Partnership (which stands for Water, Infrastructure and Supply Efficiency) that has worked to reduce infrastructure costs through the sharing of water assets such as Aurora’s Prairie Waters Pipeline.

Smart utility management

Technology is a cornerstone of the project and essential for meeting its water conservation goals. Sterling Ranch partnered with Siemens to deliver smart utility management throughout the community, like residential dual-meter water systems that differentiate between outdoor and indoor water consumption. Indoor use is priced lower than outdoor use, since indoor use is less elastic and to encourage outdoor water conservation. Other technology to reduce outdoor water use includes Rachio smart irrigation controllers, which tie irrigation to evapotranspiration data from nearby weather monitoring stations and alert users about leaks.

Native, drought-tolerant landscaping at Sterling Ranch was designed in partnership with Denver Botanic Gardens. (Sterling Ranch)

Drought-tolerant landscaping

In addition, Sterling Ranch reduces water demand through drought-tolerant landscaping co-developed with the Denver Botanic Gardens, a tactic that has garnered national attention. Sterling Ranch famously does not allow new homeowners to plant a full yard of water-thirsty grass and offers a palette of 150 native and drought-tolerant plants instead. The idea, said Smethills, is to “use grass as a throw rug instead of a carpet.” In addition, the area’s proximity to preserved open space and hundreds of miles of trails may encourage owners to reduce the size of their yards.

“People will make the right choices if you give them the right information and don’t penalize them. Residents know outdoor water is expensive. They don’t have to buy water they don’t need or want,” said Harold Smethills.

Business Outcomes

Water savings

So far, Sterling Ranch has used about half (sometimes less) as much water as other municipalities in the Denver Metro and Douglas County areas.

“We changed the conversation from water conservation to water demand management. Water demand management means figuring out how much you need. Educating residents shows them the best things they can do, in terms of sustainability,” said Smethills. Empowered with information technology and smart systems, Sterling Ranch residents are embracing sustainable lifestyles and helping the development not only meet but exceed its water management goals. The result? “It looks like Colorado and won’t die in a drought,” said Smethills.

Increased developable land

Since groundwater was not available at the site, this development would not have been possible without the rainwater harvesting and water conservation strategies employed at Sterling Ranch.

“In the old days there was a saying around Colorado: ‘whisky is for drinking and water is for fighting.’ Rather than adopt that mentality, we found that if we worked together with cities, districts, and water suppliers, we could bring complete water systems together that could be shared at a fraction of the cost of any one of us doing it by ourselves. Sharing infrastructure costs reduces costs for everyone, including our residents,” said Harold Smethills.