Douglas County planning commissioner Marvin Taxar said, “I can’t talk to you.”

Wendy Holmes, county public information officer, said she’d like to say more, but it might “harm the integrity of the process.”

And from assistant planning director Steve Koster: “I am not comfortable answering questions on behalf of the Planning Commission . . . .”

So what was the hush-hush project I was asking Douglas County officials to help me understand? A nuclear reactor near Chatfield Reservoir? A landfill at Waterton Canyon?

In fact, my inquiries were about Sterling Ranch, a proposed community of 12,050 homes and 31,700 people in the sleepy Chatfield Basin south of Denver. It’s been planned for 10 years, the subject of reams of documents on file with the county. But as Sterling Ranch approaches the final stages of zoning approval, what once was a simmering controversy is now a steaming hot potato.

On one hand, the project could create 9,000 jobs and generate millions of dollars in tax revenues for Douglas County. On the other, critics say the 3,400-acre project will turn pastoral Chatfield Basin into a swamp of traffic, pollution and noise.

In November, the planning commission voted 6-3 against giving Sterling Ranch the rezoning it needs to start building, citing concerns about traffic and density. But the final say is up to county commissioners in hearings beginning April 4.

After a few days of research, it’s not clear to me how commissioners should vote. With so many moving parts on this project, it would take months to get an accurate picture. But while Sterling Ranch developers impress me as thoughtful, visionary and well-intentioned, longtime residents who complain the rules are changing halfway through the game also have a powerful case.

What I do know is the Sterling Ranch story would make a good TV docudrama: On one side are the developers — a former Coors executive with a banking background, his wife and her brother, all third-generation Coloradans steeped in the land and real estate business. In 1990, they buy a Civil War-era cattle and wheat ranch (which apparently never produced much of either) with dreams of building a smartly planned, sprawl-resistant, nature-preserving community that will write the book on 21st century water conservation in Colorado.

On the other side are hundreds of Chatfield Basin residents, some who have lived on their 1- to 5-acre lots for more than 20 years, who say Sterling Ranch is the antithesis of everything people cherish about the area: its peacefulness, rural character, unspoiled beauty, views and wildlife. They are outraged by the density Sterling Ranch proposes, and say its traffic, asphalt, noise and light pollution would destroy their way of life.

In the wider public relations war, Sterling Ranch, which hopes to break ground next year on the first of its seven villages, seems to have the momentum. The project’s public relations team provides testimonials from young moms, as well as retirees in nearby Roxborough Village, who love the idea of new stores, restaurants, schools and the $120 million youth sports complex developers promise.

Reporters have praised Sterling Ranch’s radical water-saving agenda. “Think of grass as a throw rug, not a carpet,” Harold Smethills, one of the three developers, told The Wall Street Journal. Smethills says residents will use one-third the water most Coloradans do, mainly by embracing landscapes with drought-tolerant plants and grasses.

Whether Sterling Ranch can meet its ambitious goal of just 0.22 acre-feet of water annually per household is up for debate.

“I think they are very optimistic,” said Frank Jaeger of Parker Water and Sanitation, a district where use averages 0.39 acre-feet.

“We view it as a curiosity . . . a giant pilot study,” said Greg Baker of Aurora Water, where average use is 0.36 acre-feet. “Can it be done? Yes. Is it going to be easy? Probably not.”

Rod Kuharich, executive director of the South Metro Water Supply Authority, believes Sterling Ranch’s goals are realistic “because they’re starting from scratch (with water-wise landscaping), with significant controls on outdoor water use.”

But while writers have praised the water-conservation plan, they’ve done less digging into where Sterling Ranch will get its water in the first place. Groundwater, Douglas County’s main source, is fast being depleted and in some spots has vanished.

Sterling Ranch’s solution: renewable surface water brought from rivers and reservoirs — not wells. It’s “blisteringly expensive,” said Smethills, but by working with other water districts, they can share infrastructure and increase efficiencies.

“There’s water out there,” said Sterling Ranch engineer Mary Kay Provasnik. “There’s not as much low-hanging fruit, but if we all work together, then it’s cheaper and easier to move water from one place to another.”

Such explanations don’t satisfy critics like Dennis Larratt, who suggests the vast majority Sterling Ranch’s supply is “paper water.”

“Their plan relies on water supplies that have not been obtained or shown to be reliable,” said Larratt, a former research and development director for Johns Mansville who has lived on land adjoining Sterling Ranch 18 years and represents the 400-member Chatfield Valley Association.

“For example, when they say they have an ‘option’ on 5,000 acre-feet from Lost Creek, what does that mean? Is it firm-yield water? We don’t really know what this water is. Sterling Ranch is an appealing story, but when you get into the details, it doesn’t hold” up.

Last week, in his office, Smethills responded by saying he’s focusing on three water sources: “First, we’re buying water on the Platte.” He owns rights to 230 acre-feet annually (enough for 460 homes), to be diverted between Strontia Springs and Chatfield Reservoir and piped 5 to 6 miles to Sterling Ranch.

The second source is Denver Water and Aurora Water. “Denver and Aurora, at certain times of the year . . . have excess water,” says Smethills. It can be stored by Aurora and, ultimately, up to 60,000 acre-feet could come south to Douglas County through a pipeline to University and C-470, Smethills said.

The third source is Lost Creek in Weld County, “where we have under option 5,000 feet — all renewable, all in perpetuity.”

Kuharich, head of the South Metro Water Supply Authority, confirms water is available from Denver and Aurora. And aging Colorado farmers are selling their water rights to thirsty cities at a fast clip, The Denver Post reported March 13.

But Bruce Lytle of Lytle Water Solutions, LLC, hired by Douglas County to study Sterling Ranch’s water plan, said he could not make a recommendation because the plan was too vague. “Since Sterling Ranch does not provide the specifics of a water supply plan at this time, a number of statements in the documents provided .. . . simply cannot be substantiated,” he wrote on Oct. 22.

Talk to the Smethills and Hoagland and you’ll come away convinced they’ve poured their lifeblood into this project, which they say their children will run someday. By all accounts, they have done a superb job of getting to know the community, even promising to provide Sterling Ranch water to 700 well-dependent neighbors, at cost.

Smethills bristles at the suggestion that 12,050 homes is too many. “Nearly 37 percent of this project is open space. That’s huge. If we were going to do a classic kind of sea of rooftops, we could [build] up to 20,000 homes. We invested the land in open space.”

He’s quit trying to appease critics. “If we said 8,000 homes, they’d say 6,000. If we said 4,000, they’d say 2,000 . . . . If you want to deal with the truth, we have slightly higher density — slightly — than Highlands Ranch.”

Finally, Smethills insists Sterling Ranch will increase Chatfield Basin’s rural feel. “It will give people much more rural alternatives to what they have now: 30 miles of trails that don’t exist today, almost 2 square miles of open space, wildlife corridors. So it will be much more rural than it was before.”

Larratt remains a huge skeptic of everything from Smethills’ project cost estimate (“$4.4 billion? They’re using the Ouija board”) to what would will happen in an economic downturn (“A small family operation like Hoagland and Smethills can’t absorb shocks in the economy.”)

Larratt says he would “happily support a development compatible with the rural residential zoning: 1- to 5-acre lots . . . . The message I want to give Douglas County commissioners is if the county follows its own regulations, Sterling Ranch will not be built as presented today.”

I know one thing about Sterling Ranch: I don’t envy county commissioners who must decide its fate.

Freelance columnist Mary Winter (mwinte@aol.com) of Denver works for PoliticsDaily.com.