GRAND COUNTY WATER

Here I present a few facts about Colorado water rights.  Colorado water law is complicated and I am not a lawyer. These facts are from the great book Colorado Water Law for Non-Lawyers by P. Andrew Jones and Tom Cech.

 

1.  Due to orographic lift, the Central Mountains and Western Slope can receive nearly three times as much river water supplies as the Front Range and Eastern High Plains.

 

2.  The Prior Appropriation Doctrine (aka Colorado Water Law) developed as a result of mining claims in California and Colorado.

 

3.  Four guiding principles of Prior Appropriation Doctrine:

a.  To establish a water right, a party needs to divert the water and apply it to  a beneficial use.  The right established is usufructory in nature, meaning that (1) no person could “own” the stream or the water in it, but one could develop the right to use the water of the stream for a beneficial purpose; and (2) the existence of the right was dependent upon continued application to a beneficial use.

b.  “First in time, first in right”: the earliest uses of the water gained a right to use it—to the exclusion of others—during times of shortage.

c.  Water could be removed from the stream and used in locations distant from the stream, even in another drainage basin.

d.  Once established, the right to use water could be sold to third parties.

 

4.  A party must go to water court to get their water right adjudicated and be awarded a decree, a water right without a decree has little or no value.

 

5.  Colorado practices the “purest” and strictest form of Prior Appropriation which means that water is delivered to users based solely on priority, without regard for social, environmental, or societal outcomes or consequences.

 

6.  In 1922 the Colorado River Compact was signed allocating water between Upper and Lower Basin states on the Colorado River. Click here for a recent article in the New Yoker about the Colorado River Compact and other issues.

 

Instream Flow Program

1.  Senate Bill 97 in 1973 created Colorado’s Instream Flow Program which allowed the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) to hold instream flows and protect streamflow through a reach of stream rather than just a point and to protect levels in natural lakes.

 

2.  CWCB has the authority for new appropriations of water rights as well as the authority to acquire existing, decreed senior water rights on a voluntary basis from willing landowners for instream flow uses.

 

3.  Colorado has established instream flow rights on over 8,500 miles of stream and 486 natural lakes in the state.