Routt County Faces Water Math Crisis Over Stagecoach Ranch

Steamboat Springs —365 acre-feet. That is the amount of potable water Discovery Land Company claims Stagecoach Mountain Ranch will need annually. But wait. In May 2025, the same developers told the Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District that snowmaking alone would require approximately 400 acre-feet. On paper, the numbers don’t match. In practice, they are a mess.

Gary Wockner, Executive Director of Save The World’s Rivers, didn’t mince words in his Oct. 7 letter to the Routt County Planning Department. He isn’t here for the trees or the wildlife. He is here for the water. And he is asking the county to do the math before they sign off on anything.

The project itself is massive. We are talking about a 6,100-acre private ski area and luxury residential development near Stagecoach Reservoir in South Routt County. The plans include 613 luxury units, 137 workforce housing units, and 95 affordable units. For context, this is not a small subdivision. This is a new town being built on top of an existing landscape.

Wockner’s core argument is simple: the county cannot determine if there is enough water if the applicant’s own data contradicts itself. The developer’s potable water estimate assumes second-home owners only stay 20 to 25 days a year, calculating demand at 50% occupancy. Wockner argues that remote work and short-term rentals change those patterns. If occupancy rises, demand rises with it. An adequacy finding built on low occupancy is only valid if the county also caps actual use. Currently, there is no cap.

There is also the issue of where the water comes from. According to Wockner, the Upper Yampa Water Conservancy District has not received an application for a storage contract. Furthermore, no infrastructure currently exists to deliver reservoir water to the ski area location. The county should require a hydrogeologic analysis of the Browns Park wells, including whether the water is tributary to the Yampa and how depletions will affect the river.

This letter arrives about two months after the Routt County Planning Department sent a second corrections letter to Discovery Land Company. That letter identified more than 120 questions, conflicts, and missing materials. The county still has 10 pending land-use applications to review. It is a lot of paperwork for a lot of acres.

The bottom line for locals is that until these numbers are reconciled by a registered engineer, the claim that there is enough water is just an estimate. And estimates are dangerous when you are drawing from the same basin that feeds the Yampa River. If the county approves the project based on the lower 365-acre-foot figure, but actual usage hits the higher demand levels, the cost of that discrepancy will likely show up in our river levels and our water bills. The county needs to pick a number, stick to it, and enforce it. Until then, Stagecoach Mountain Ranch is just a proposal with a leaky budget.