In Keep Airport Road Environmental & Safe v. Boulder County Board of Commissioners, the Colorado Court of Appeals dismissed an appeal challenging Boulder County’s decision to terminate a conservation easement burdening private land, concluding neighboring property owners and local residents lacked standing to sue.
The case came about after the Boulder County Board of Commissioners voted to terminate a decades-old conservation easement on agricultural land to allow annexation and potential development of a mixed residential community. Adjacent landowners and a community group sought judicial review, arguing the termination would harm them aesthetically and financially and violated land use protections.
The Court of Appeals held the challengers had no legally protected interest because they were neither parties to, nor third-party beneficiaries of, the easement agreement. And the easement’s termination was not itself a “land use decision” authorizing development. The court also rejected arguments that county land use code notice provisions conferred standing.
The decision clarifies, as a matter of first impression, that neighbors generally cannot challenge the termination of a conservation easement on private land absent an explicit legal right to enforce the easement. The ruling reinforces limits on third-party standing in land use and conservation disputes and underscores that participation in public hearings alone does not create a legally protected interest sufficient to seek judicial review.
Read the full published opinion at coloradojudicial.gov/system/files/opinions-2026-01/24CA2203-PD.pdf.