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Water Rights Resources

Water law is complex, nuanced, and can be difficult to understand. We delve into common water law concepts and provide tutorials that describe how it use publicly available tools to learn more about water rights. To this end, below are a series of articles that are designed to help parties develop a general understanding of some of the basic principles of water law. The information provided below is for educational purposes only and if you have specific questions about your water rights, please contact the attorneys at Nazarenus Stack & Wombacher for legal advice. Use of this information is explicitly subject the website disclaimer available at this link https://www.nswlaw.com/disclaimer

Denver Basin Aquifer Determination Tool Tutorial

            Properties overlying the Denver Basin aquifers located along the Front Range of Colorado are entitled to withdraw water underlying their land based on the ownership of the overlying surface. The amount of water that one is entitled to withdraw from each aquifer is determined using a groundwater model. The Division of Water Resources has a tool that allows individuals to run this model for their property; the tutorial below describes how to use this tool.

(1) The Denver Basin Aquifer Determination Tool is available at https://dwr.state.co.us/Tools/. Click on the “Aquifer Determination” button to open a drop-down menu with three options, as shown below.

(2) For the Denver Basin Aquifers, you can run the model using either a “Specific Location” or a “Tract of Land.” Both approaches will give you similar results as to how much water can be withdrawn, but they provide slightly different information. For example, if you are unsure whether your land is located within a Designated Groundwater Basin, the results using the “Tract of Land” approach will answer this question. Similarly, if you are interested in knowing the depth to the groundwater in each aquifer, only the “Specific Location” tool will give you this information. Below is a comparison of the outputs from each approach. Because the approaches provide different information, it may be helpful to use both methods to get a complete picture of the Denver Basin Groundwater under your property.

(3) Specific Location Method. The first three fields (Receipt No., Applicant, and Evaluated By), have no impact on the results; so, you can enter your name or you can enter “N/A.” Next, enter the total number of acres. Leave the “Elevation” field blank for now as the tool will fill this in for you after you enter the legal description for the property. Finally click on the “Location” drop-down menu to select the format of the legal description that you’d like to use for your search. We have found that the “PLSS Quarters” method is one of the easiest to use because it is the easiest way to ascertain the legal description. In fact, the Division of Water Resources Map View Tool (https://www.nswlaw.com/water-rights-resources/map-viewer-tutorial-how-to-research-water-rights-using-the-map-viewer) can be used to determine the “PLSS Quarters” location by turning on the “PLSS” layer in that tool.

For this tutorial, we are going to evaluate 160 acres under what is now part of Denver International Airport. This parcel is located in the NW ¼ of Section 28, Township 2 South, Range 65 West, of the Sixth Principal Meridian. This information will be input into the tool as shown below. After the legal description is entered, click the “Get USGS Elevation” button so that the elevation of the property will automatically populate. Finally, click on “Run Aquifer Determination.”

The results will tell you the depth to each aquifer, the “tributary” status of each aquifer, and the amount of water allotted to the property based on an assumed aquifer life of 100 years.

(4) Tract of Land Method. The first three fields (Receipt No., Applicant, and Evaluated By), have no impact on the results; so, you can input your name or you can enter “N/A.” Next, click on the “Location” drop-down menu to select the format of the legal description that you’d like to use for your search. We have found that the “PLSS Quarters” method is one of the easiest to use because it is the easiest way to ascertain the legal description for most properties using this method. In fact, the Division of Water Resources Map View Tool (https://www.nswlaw.com/water-rights-resources/map-viewer-tutorial-how-to-research-water-rights-using-the-map-viewer) can be used to determine the “PLSS Quarters” location by turning on the “PLSS” layer in that tool.

For this tutorial, we are going to evaluate 160 acres under what is now part of Denver International Airport. This parcel is located in the NW ¼ of Section 28, Township 2 South, Range 65 West, of the Sixth Principal Meridian. This information will be input into the tool as shown below. After the legal description is entered, you will click on the “Add Location” button.

 Next, identify the specific portion of Section 28 that you wish to analyze. For this tutorial, we are looking at the Northwest corner of Section 28, so we clicked the “NW” button as shown below, which turns the NW quarter of the grid green. Next, click “Apply Selections” in order to add this particular tract of land to your analysis.

You can input multiple tracts of land in different sections by altering the legal description, selecting the appropriate portions of the section of land, and clicking “Appy Selections.” Once you have input all of the tracts of land, click “Run Aquifer Determination,” as shown below.

The results are shown below.

If you have questions about interpreting the results of the Denver Basin Aquifer Determination Tool for your property or would like assistance to adjudicate the Denver Basin groundwater under your property, please call the experienced attorneys at Nazarenus Stack & Wombacher LLC.

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