Great Outdoors Colorado will spend $100 million this year to protect open space, wildlife and parks across the state, the largest effort in the agency's 15-year history.

Approved by voters in 1992, GOCO, as it is known, uses lottery money to protect open space, preserve wildlife and help build new parks and recreation facilities.

"We've been aggressively asking people what they have and what might require a large infusion of money," said John Swartout, GOCO's executive director.

Preliminary plans call for $66 million to be spent protecting large-scale scenic regions of the state.

The remaining $34 million will pay for things the agency always funds: outdoor recreation projects, trails, and cash for new park and wildlife programs.

Cities, counties, conservation groups and others who want to tap the $100 million pool must go through a competitive application process. The GOCO board will decide in December which projects to finance.

Among those likely to be considered:

The Northeast Greenway Project: a proposed 1,000-acre trail and open space network surrounding the Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wildlife Refuge.

The Rio Grande Initiative: a proposal to protect 14,000 acres along the Rio Grande River in Rio Grande, Alamosa, Conejos and Mineral counties.

The Upper White River Watershed Project: an effort to protect 11,000 acres of land in Rio Blanco County.

Jennifer Young, a staffer in Adams County's parks department, is rushing to complete the application for the Northeast Greenway Project. It would, among other things, provide much-needed parks around Brighton, a community that is short on recreation spots.

"Brighton doesn't have a lot of open space available for their residents," Young said. "This would help pay for a 400-acre park."

GOCO has protected more than 600,000 acres since the early 1990s. In years when its cash purse grows large enough, it initiates a series of so-called Legacy Grants, which are designed to pay for large-scale, high-value open space protection efforts. The last such round of funding occurred in 2004, when the agency spent $48 million in addition to its normal annual grant-making.

Chris Leding, communications director at GOCO, said there is no shortage of land protection projects to be funded. "We're still getting about three times as many requests as we have dollars available," Leding said. "There are projects that have real potential but that are not ripe and ready to go."

Successful projects have to demonstrate they have local financial support, that without protection they are in immediate danger of being developed and that they complement other preservation efforts under way, Swartout said.

News of the GOCO Legacy initiative comes as problems maintaining the state's park system are emerging. Last week, the parks department said it faces a $150 million backlog in maintenance projects, due largely to cutbacks in its operating budget by state lawmakers.

The parks department gets 10 percent of all lottery proceeds, roughly $11 million to $12 million annually, some of which is spent on maintenance.

But state law sharply limits the use of GOCO money to pay for routine maintenance of the park system.

Pressure remains high to continue protecting Colorado's wild and scenic landscapes before they're developed.

According to a survey by the Colorado Conservation Trust, roughly 1.6 million acres of land have been preserved by nonprofits such as GOCO and other government agencies, but about 2 million additional acres need protection.

smithj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5474