Alliance for Land Liberty advocates for and facilitates cooperative local governance organized around watersheds in Delta County, Colorado to create an independent and resilient society which protects its rights to and fosters its responsibility to land and property.

Delta County Commissioners enacted a boilerplate Land Use Code (LUC) during the COVID lockdowns, on April 1, 2021. Before this, the county’s land use regulations consisted of a handful of simple ordinances addressing junk accumulation, road access permits, and a “Development Application” ordinance requiring new development plans to be filed with the county (the latter was, allegedly, not enforced). There was little documented public input, except for a focused opposition against lax regulations surrounding oil and gas development and intensive agriculture resulting in hundreds of written comments that failed to achieve any changes to the document. Not even one year after the implementation of the county’s first Land Use Code, the new Planning Director, Carl Holm, began working on an extensive overhaul, adding over fifty pages of text and significantly altering much of the language contained within. At the January 11, 2023 Planning Commission meeting, hundreds of Delta County residents stated that they felt “blind-sided” and were completely unaware that these codes had been adopted. Others said they only found out about the new LUC because they were met with significant obstacles against their attempts to develop, subdivide, or simply live on their properties over the past year.

On February 8, 2023, concerned residents formed Alliance for Land Liberty, or A4LL to provide a platform for the voices of The People to be heard. We have taken it upon ourselves to survey the community to determine what problems The People of Delta County would like to see a future LUC solve. On February 28, 2023, over five hundred residents showed up strongly and authentically to the public hearing on the LUC for our County. The message was simple: STOP the LUC update immediately, REPEAL the existing LUC, and have the people properly draft a land use development handbook and put it to a public VOTE. Even though, the County Commissioners rejected the update of the LUC at the hearing they went right back to revising the existing LUC line-by-line with the assistance of Carl Holm and the County Attorney, John Baier. The County Commissioners made it clear that the County will profit greatly from these Land Use Codes and that they are being pressured by developers to continue revising them.

One of the A4LL’s goals is to replace the over 200-page document full of jargon with a set of simple common sense rules that adhere to the values and objectives described in the County’s Master Plan.These guidelines will be created by the men and women of Delta County to meet the needs of the distinct regions of the county. Another goal of the A4LL is to create a charter for the County and declare it a Home Rule County. In light of state- and nationwide pressures for land grabs under the guise of “sustainable development,” we see it as a major problem when the elected officials are not listening to their constituents and are not acting in their best interest. Help us mount an adequate resistance to the global agenda in our rural community - donate today. Volunteer or become a member by signing up for our email list and join us at monthly action oriented and community building potlucks.