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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

Water Rights: The Importance of Diversion Records

When thinking about water rights, one common question is: “What are my water rights worth?” The answer to this question is very case specific and depends on a variety of factors, including the priority date of the water right, the availability of water in a particular area, the level of new development in the area, and the yield of the underlying water right, among other considerations. Many of these factors are subjective, but water right owners can get a general understanding of the value of their water right by understanding the annual yield of that water right. This is because the more water that is available to a water right on a year-to-year basis the more water one has to place to a beneficial use. The most valuable water rights are those that are consistently available on a year-to-year basis because they provide a sustainable and consistent water supply than can be relied on to support a farm, ranch, business, residential development, or a municipal water supply.

Diversion records are also important because if you desire to change your water right from one use to another (i.e., from irrigation to domestic) then the diversion records (as opposed to the amounts described in the water court decree) dictate how much water is available for this new use. See the discussion of changes of water rights (https://www.nswlaw.com/water-rights-resources/changes-of-water-rights) for more information on this issue. Tracking and recording diversions is also very important for preserving the value of your water rights. Reliable diversion records can make your water right more attractive to a potential buyer. On the contrary, a lack of reliable diversion records can indicate problems with a water right and can make a water right a poor candidate to be changed to new uses.

 For most surface water rights, the Colorado Division of Water Resources collects and maintains diversion records that document how much water is diverted on a daily, monthly, and annual basis. The accuracy of these records can vary throughout the state, but it is a good place to start when trying to understand the value of a water right. Water rights that consistently divert large quantities of water are typically more valuable than water rights that may only be available every few years. To find the diversion records for your water right, the first thing you need to do is locate your water right within the Colorado Division of Water Resources database. Here is a link to a tutorial to find your water right: https://www.nswlaw.com/water-rights-resources/structures-tutorial-how-to-find-information-for-a-water-right-by-name-or-case-number

Once you have found the water right you are researching, select the “Diversion Records” drop down menu, as shown below. The “Diversions – Summary” is the best place to start:

Clicking in the “Diversions – Summary” will take you to an annual and monthly summary of the diversion records for the water right, as shown below.

In this case, you will see that Chatfield Reservoir has robust diversion records that show diversions in nearly every month for the last several decades. These records are representative of very strong diversion records. For irrigation water rights, you may only see diversions between March/April and October/November because irrigation rights are typically only diverted during these irrigation seasons.

You can create a pdf of the diversion records or download an excel file of the records by clicking the buttons, as shown below:

For assistance in locating the publicly maintained diversion records for your water right or if you have questions about diversion records, please contact one of the experienced attorneys at Nazarenus Stack & Wombacher LLC.

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