Speakers at Douglas County meeting praise Platte Valley Water Partnership and say agreements bar "buy-and-dry" transfers

At a Douglas County meeting, Speaker 2, a commenter, said the Platte Valley Water Partnership "is a partnership between Barco Water and now Castle Rock and the Lower South Platte Conservancy District."

Speakers framed the partnership as a regional approach to water resiliency and long-term supply. "The Platte Valley Water Partnership is the path to the future," Speaker 3 said. Speaker 4 described it as "one of the most innovative regional partnerships that's been done in the state of Colorado."

Speakers emphasized that the agreement language forbids "buy and dry" transfers into county infrastructure. "This project is not your typical buy and dry project. We have written it into the agreements. No buy and dry water will be allowed in our infrastructure," Speaker 3 said. The speakers said that approach is intended to let agricultural and municipal communities "live together" instead of municipalities buying out farms and drying up agricultural lands.

Speakers linked the partnership to local economic and service reliability: water resiliency, they said, helps businesses and residents in the Highway 85 corridor and supports development between the Waterton campus/Lockheed Martin area and Space Command in Colorado Springs. Those remarks tied the water strategy to both supply reliability and regional planning, but the meeting transcript does not show any formal vote or legal adoption of the partnership during this session.