Clear Creek

Source Our computation, no independent reference · computed here from the screened DWR record Source Our computation, no independent reference · no independent reference; see /methods

This year, in context

In the weeks around 2026-10-01 (the newest reading on file), flows at the 74 ranked gages are running at a median 86% of their own long-term norm for this window — 50 below a typical year, 24 at or above. Driest relative to its record: ARVADA (BLUNN) RESERVOIR INLET FROM RALSTON CREEK, ranking 1st lowest of 6 years.

Gage flow trend & changepoints

Of the 120 gages with enough record, 8 are trending down and 2 up, and 5 carry a detected shift. The clearest is Straight Cr. Tunnel at East Portal of Eisenhower, its annual mean flow changing -0.08 cfs per decade over 31 years (p<0.0001). The other 108 show no clear signal either way. 2 transbasin gages meter imported or exported water — marked ⇆ below and kept out of these counts, because that flow is an operator's decision, not the basin's hydrology (all transbasin diversions).

Drought history, cost, and the four-century context moved to the Drought tab.

⚠️ 2 gages flagged: their records may have quietly shifted against their neighbours, so treat their trends with caution.

108 other gage(s) show no significant trend or changepoint (not shown).

1 of those show a significant trend once extended backwards from a retired neighbour's record: Clear Creek at Golden (115 yr, decreasing). Those are reconstructions, not measurements — each gage's page shows both.

How the measurement network itself changed

This basin was not always measured the way it is today — the API-era record is dense and recent, the early record sparse. 102 gage(s) and 139 structure(s) report in 2026, but structure reporting only reached half its modern level around ~1981. Every historical claim below is checked against this: long-term shifts that co-move with the growth of the network carry an explicit measurement-evolution caution, and abandonment screens whose idleness begins before the modern reporting era are flagged †.

Mass-balance (network closure) trend

Structure divrec-history backfill coverage as of the last check: 45% of 226 schematic-relevant structures. 10 year(s) clear the 30% coverage gate so far (2016–2025) -- the trend activates automatically once qualifying years span a full decade. No action needed; the nightly backfill keeps extending the record.

Reach gain/loss shifts (1950–2026)

Mass-balance kinks computed for every summer month back to 1950 (1011 reach-snapshots) — which reaches gain or lose water, and how that has shifted across decades. Each shift is cross-checked against the observation record above: as more diversions became metered, "unaccounted" water shrinks mechanically, which can masquerade as a hydrologic shift.

• CLEAR CREEK NEAR GOLDEN, CO.: reach shifted from +78 cfs to +157 cfs summer mean (more gaining, p=0.030, 30 yr) [mountain crystalline canyon: minimal groundwater storage -- large or shifting unaccounted losses here are more consistent with data/measurement issues or unmodeled plumbing than with aquifer exchange]
• CLEAR CREEK AT GOLDEN, CO: reach shifted from +92 cfs to +32 cfs summer mean (more losing, p=0.035, 52 yr) [sedimentary plains/foothills: moderate groundwater connectivity -- gain/loss shifts can be real aquifer response; corroborate with nearby well records]

Groundwater now has its own tab: 510 monitored well(s), water-table trends, stream corridors, and the advisory depletion screen.

Reservoirs now has its own tab: 151 reservoir(s), end-of-year storage back to 1920, click-to-chart histories.

Cross-gage pattern fingerprint

Over the 52-year window with full coverage (1975–2026), the dominant shared pattern across 3 gage(s) explains 87% of year-to-year variance (almost certainly a basin-wide climate/snowpack driver).

All gages in this window move with the shared pattern -- no localized outlier.

Structures most implicated by reconciliation (as of 2026-10-01)

Which structures' data absorbed the most correction when the current mass-balance snapshot was reconciled -- see the Historical tab for the full picture on any date.

• SEA OF TRANQUILLITY RES (diversion): -7.2 cfs (50% of that reach's correction)
• DORY LAKE INLET DITCH (diversion): -7.2 cfs (50% of that reach's correction)
• HIAWATHA DIVERSION (diversion): +1.1 cfs (7% of that reach's correction)
• WIDEAWAKE UPPER SPRING (return): +1.1 cfs (7% of that reach's correction)
• WIDEAWAKE LOWER SPRING (return): +1.1 cfs (7% of that reach's correction)
• MARYS LAKE (diversion): +1.1 cfs (7% of that reach's correction)
• PATRICIA LAKE (diversion): +1.1 cfs (7% of that reach's correction)
• LAKE SUSAN (diversion): +1.1 cfs (7% of that reach's correction)
• MINERS DITCH PIPELINE (diversion): +1.1 cfs (7% of that reach's correction)
• HIDDEN VALLEY SURFACE DIVERSION (diversion): +1.1 cfs (7% of that reach's correction)

Source DWR administrative record · verify at DWR groundwater wells ↗ Source DWR administrative record · verify at DWR well permits ↗

4,045 water-level measurements across 510 monitored well(s) — 276 alluvial, 96 bedrock — plus 6 administered well(s) reporting metered pumping.

Well map

3D aquifer x-ray

Every aquifer unit as its own head surface, animated through time.

Water-table trends

Of 6 well(s) with enough record for a trend test: 1 declining, 3 rising.

Stream corridors — the surface connection

Where a reach's gain or loss has shifted, the wells within two miles of its anchoring gage and what their water table did over the same era.

CLEAR CREEK NEAR GOLDEN, CO.: 4 alluvial well(s) nearby. Glover screen: 3.1 cfs of nearby metered alluvial pumping → est. lagged depletion 1.9–2.9 cfs (uncalibrated T/S ranges; flagged for SPDSS calibration, AWAS cross-check, and expert review — DWR's AWAS is the authority).

CLEAR CREEK AT GOLDEN, CO: 4 alluvial well(s) nearby. Glover screen: 3.1 cfs of nearby metered alluvial pumping → est. lagged depletion 2.5–3.0 cfs (uncalibrated T/S ranges; flagged for SPDSS calibration, AWAS cross-check, and expert review — DWR's AWAS is the authority).

Wells labeled by administrative world before anything else is said about them: tributary alluvium participates in the priority system; designated-basin and Denver Basin bedrock aquifers are governed differently and are excluded from stream-connection reasoning. Read bedrock declines differently too: deep bedrock aquifers recharge negligibly on human timescales, so a falling bedrock level is storage mining — effectively permanent — not a drought response that a wet year undoes. All screens advisory.

Source DWR administrative record · verify at DWR structure records ↗

151 reservoir(s) with 37,307 storage measurement(s), 1920–2026. Basin storage as of 2025-10-31 (the record's own end — reservoir records publish ~annually): 31,848 AF across 39 reservoir(s).

Reservoir map — how full is each vessel?

Basin storage, end of each water year

End-of-water-year totals; per-year reservoir counts shown because reporting coverage varies -- a total is only comparable to years with similar counts.

Largest reservoirs on record

Click a row to chart its full storage history, or open its dossier for rights, documents and dam-safety facts.

Source Independent agency measurement · fetched 2026-10-14 · verify at NRCS report generator ↗ Source Our computation, scored against a reference · NRCS forecast, graded here against the gage record

Snow-water equivalent, WY2027

NRCS SNOTEL, daily. Sites are assigned to the district whose boundary contains them — the snow that feeds this district can also sit in a neighboring headwater district.

Two ways a snow year goes wrong (1993–2026)

A bad snow year here comes in two flavors (both called snow droughtA winter that shorts the snowpack. It happens two ways: a dry one, where the snow never comes, and a warm one, where near-normal snow falls but melts off weeks early -- and the river feels them differently.), and the river feels them differently. In 5 of the last 34 winters the snow never came — the pack peaked below 80% of its median. In 0 more, the snow came but left early — a near-normal peak melted out two weeks or more ahead of its usual date, sending the water down before the season needed it.

The snow never came: 2002, 2004, 2012, 2021, 2026.

Computed by this site from 1 SNOTEL site’ full daily records (NRCS AWDB, back to 1993). Each year is measured against each site’s own multi-decade median — not the 1991–2020 normal the chart above uses — so the 1980s grade against a fair baseline. Peak and melt-out need 85% of the season’s days on the record; thin years are dropped, not guessed. Derived from snow measurements alone — it cannot tell dry-from-warm causes apart, only what the snowpack did.

Runoff outlook — Clear Ck at Golden

NRCS's final issue (2026-06-01) calls it even odds that at least 52 kAF arrives over 06-01 to 09-30 — 52% of a normal season; almost certainly at least 42, probably not more than 63. Our own record at this gage shows 26 kAF actually delivered. New forecasts begin in January. How to read these numbers →

We test a record-based adjustment of the April benchmark at every graded point. Here it did not beat NRCS over 82 replayed seasons (17% typical miss unadjusted vs 20% adjusted), so none is shown — NRCS’s own forecast, unadjusted, is the best April benchmark available for this river. Why we test →

How good are these forecasts here? (1975–2025)

Grading every April issue against what the river then delivered, measured at this gage’s own record — 50 seasons: the median miss of the 50% forecast is 19%, with a high bias of 7%, and the observed volume landed inside the stated 10–90% band 78% of the time (a calibrated forecast would say 80%).

Computed by this site: NRCS's archived April issues (their period as issued each year) against the observed volume in DWR’s published record; years with under 90% daily coverage are dropped, not summed. A grade of the forecast, never of the forecasters — these are hard rivers. How this point ranks among every graded Colorado forecast point →

What April snow has meant for this river (1993–2026)

Across 34 measured years, the season’s water has closely followed the April snowpack: a year opening April with 80% of median snow has typically gone on to deliver about 71% of a normal season (a snow-to-runoff elasticityHow strongly one number moves with another. A snow-to-runoff elasticity of 1.5 means a 10% shortfall in April snowpack has typically become a 15% shortfall in the season's water. of 1.3).

Computed by this site: the district’s April 1 SWE (% of each SNOTEL site’s own-record median) against the observed April–July volume at this gage (% of its median season) — a fixed window every year, unlike the forecast grades above, which use each issue’s own period. The slope is fit so single wild years can’t steer it (Theil–Sen, log space); years missing 10% of their days are dropped.

Source Our computation, no independent reference · computed here from the screened DWR record Source Independent agency measurement · fetched 2026-10-06 · verify at U.S. Drought Monitor ↗

Right now

This is the 37th-driest week 40 in 101 years of record at CLEAR CREEK AT DERBY (as of 2026-09-28; this week’s flow sits at the 37th percentileRank against the record: a river at its 5th percentile is lower than it was in 95 of the past 100 years on this same date. for the date). On this week’s US Drought Monitor, Grand County is 54% in D4 exceptional drought (2026-10-06). The law agrees: the most senior active call leaves 99% of this district’s decreed flow rights junior to the calling right this week.

Every year since 1914, week by week

Each thin row is a year at CLEAR CREEK AT DERBY; each cell is one week’s flow ranked against the same calendar week of every other year — warm means dry for the date, blue wet, so seasonality cancels and droughts appear as warm bands. Gaps are missing record, never a dry river. Click a year to reconstruct it on the Historical tab.

This year against its analogs

Over the 40 weeks recorded so far, 2026’s weekly trace most resembles 2002 (mean gap 13.4 percentile points; next closest 1954 (16.4), 1981 (16.7)). The analog’s remainder is drawn as context — its ending is what happened to it, not a forecast for this year.

The Drought Monitor’s view since 2000

Mean share of area in each class across Adams, Broomfield, Clear Creek, Denver, Gilpin, Grand, Jefferson, Summit counties — the counties this district’s gages sit in, which overlap the district imperfectly. The Drought Monitor weighs soils, vegetation and local reports; it is CONTEXT beside the river’s own record above, not the water-rights picture.

The law’s own drought gauge

When water runs short, administration answers: calls reach further back in time, and more decreed rights go junior to the calling right. This is that response, weekly since 2004 — the share of this district’s decreed flow rights junior to the most senior active call. Watch it spike in the named droughts below, and linger after the river recovers.

Computed from DWR’s call record (1615 calls touching this district) against the district’s rights index. Scoping is deliberately coarse — a call’s own district, or districts named in its comments — and this is administration’s RESPONSE, not a per-structure verdict (each dossier’s curtailment card does that, with stream miles). A deepening call can also reflect growing demand, not only shrinking supply.

1635–1987: this river before anyone measured it

Tree rings record wet and dry years centuries before the first gage. This is the published reconstruction of annual flow at Clear Creek at Golden — 353 years, with its uncertainty band drawn, not implied — and the green line is the measured record at the same gage, water-year totals from DWR’s daily data, carrying the story through 2026. A reconstruction is an estimate, not a measurement: it answers “is this decade unusual in four centuries?”, and nothing in this site’s statistics uses it.

Why the two lines disagree on purpose: the trees were calibrated against naturalized flow — upstream diversions and storage added back — while the gage measures what the ditches left in the river. So the measured line running below the reconstruction is not an error; the gap is, roughly, human use. Over the 13 years both series cover, the river carried a median of 82% of its estimated natural flow past this gage. And because the reconstruction was fit to gage-era data, the overlap shows how well trees track the river (the authors report the models explain 63–76% of gage variance) — it is a calibration, not an independent test.

Woodhouse, C.A. and J.J. Lukas (2006), Multi-century tree-ring reconstructions of Colorado streamflow for water resource planning, Climatic Change 78; data via NOAA NCEI World Data Service for Paleoclimatology / TreeFlow. Source data ↗

This basin’s droughts, by its own record

Detected mechanically: the 26-week smoothed percentile below the 30th for at least 20 weeks; recovered on regaining the 50th. The water-table clock compares each monitoring well against its own pre-drought median (the 3 years before onset) and dates the year the median well got back — the aquifer remembers longest, and “still below” is a finding, not a gap. The knobs are stated because the episode list depends on them — a different reasonable choice merges or splits episodes at the edges. Names are attached where an episode overlaps a drought Colorado already talks about.

What drought has cost here

Since 1991, federal crop insurance has paid $76,153,742 in drought-caused claims across Adams, Broomfield, Clear Creek, Denver, Gilpin, Grand, Jefferson, Summit counties — 51.9% of all insured crop losses there. The worst year was 2022 ($17,283,650).

USDA crop-insurance indemnities where the recorded cause of loss is drought, summed over the counties this district's gages sit in. Counties overlap water districts imperfectly, and insured-crop claims are a floor on drought damage, not a total. Source: USDA RMA cause-of-loss files.

When this basin claimed its water

Every bar is a year’s new appropriations (2,156 rights across 101 years of shared record), colored by that year’s wetness from the barcode above. Here the correlation is +0.16 — essentially no wet-dry pattern; here, law and settlement set the pace, not the weather. Across the state both behaviors exist: ephemeral southwest basins file after wet demonstrations, transbasin-source basins under drought — and the biggest statewide filing waves sat in the 1950s drought and after 2002, not in the wet 1980s–90s.

Appropriation dates are the CLAIMED initiation of a right, not the courthouse filing date; the record is survivor-biased (abandoned claims are absent, so failed dry-era scrambles are undercounted); and the big 1960s and 2000s spikes sit on legal events — the pre-1969-Act adjudication era and 2000s legislation — not on weather. A correlation here is a description, never a cause.

New to how a dry winter becomes a call on the river? Anatomy of a drought walks the chain in four minutes — snow to rivers to reservoirs to calls to the water table.

Who serves it, who protects it

Two registers the site fetches on their own schedules, read for this district. Neither is a DWR record; each links its own page and its agency.

Public water systems here

Source Register of another agency · fetched 2026-10-06 · verify at EPA SDWIS ↗

27 systems touch this district (27 community systems reporting 1,906,414 people served, a figure that counts a wholesaler's customers twice); 2 of them carry an open health-based violation on EPA's record.

and 19 more; the full directory filters by district.

Instream-flow rights held by the state

Source Register of another agency · fetched 2026-10-11 · verify at CWCB instream flow program ↗

26 reaches over 127.5 miles and 2 natural lake levels, held by the Colorado Water Conservation Board so that water stays in the stream. Every reach, with its schedule and case →

• Clear Creek, 13.5 mi: 10 (1/1 - 12/31) cfs (appropriated 1984, 84CW0649) · dossier
• West Fork Clear Creek, 9.1 mi: 5 (11/1 - 3/31), 11 (4/1 - 10/31) cfs (appropriated 1987, 87CW0276) · dossier
• Fall River, 8.5 mi: 5.25 (5/1 - 9/30), 2 (10/1 - 4/30) cfs (appropriated 1995, 95CW0256) · dossier
• Ralston Creek, 7.6 mi: 0.5 (1/1 - 12/31) cfs (appropriated 1986, 86CW0302) · dossier
• Leavenworth Creek, 7.1 mi: 1.5 (1/1 - 12/31) cfs (appropriated 1984, 85CW0418) · dossier
• Bard Creek, 7.0 mi: 1.5 (1/1 - 12/31) cfs (appropriated 1984, 84CW0653) · dossier

and 22 more on the district's instream-flow page.

What the water is like -- USGS sensors right now, where it has been sampled, the impaired-waters list, and how the tap water here stands with EPA -- is on the Water quality tab.

Designated groundwater basins are on their own page.

Source Adjudicated record · verify at DWR water-right transactions ↗ Source Adjudicated record · verify at DWR net amounts ↗

Decreed rights on this network run from 1859-12-31 to 2023-07-05. Of the 20 structures with a yield estimate, the median one’s senior right was in priority 100% of a median irrigation season and 87% in a dry one. 23 abandonment screens and 30 compliance flags are listed below as leads for review — a screen is not an abandonment and a flag is not a violation.

Rights on file: 3627 across 1815 structure(s); 153 structure(s) carry 960 court-case references. Advisory reading aids on public DWR data — not administrative or legal conclusions.

Is the river getting harder to divert from?

Over 1951–2025, administration on this district has been tightening: 2 of 3 measures (days under callA senior water right demanding its water, which requires everyone junior on that stream to stop diverting until it is satisfied., calls set, seniorityColorado shares water by date: the earlier the right, the stronger its claim when the river runs short. "First in time, first in right." of the controlling call) are moving toward more administration, none the other way.

What the water is for — decade by decade

Of the water this district's structures diverted, the share whose decree includes municipal supply moved from 98% in the 1980s to 98% in the 2020s.

Why diversions stopped — call-based explanations

Sustained diversion stops matched to senior administrative calls. Self-check: 84% of the 19 explanations coverable by DWR's own out-of-priority analysis agree with it (6 outside its scope).

• COLO AGRICULTURAL D (0700549) DWR↗☆ stopped 2025-10-04 (27+ days) — call at CLEAR CR PLATTE RIVER D curtailing 100% of its decreed rate [heuristic-partial, district-confirmed]
• CROKE CANAL (0700553) DWR↗☆ stopped 2025-08-07 (11+ days) — call at CLEAR CR PLATTE RIVER D curtailing 100% of its decreed rate [heuristic-partial, district-confirmed]
• CHURCH DITCH (0700540) DWR↗☆ stopped 2025-08-06 (86+ days) — call at CLEAR CR PLATTE RIVER D curtailing 100% of its decreed rate [heuristic-partial, district-confirmed]
• GREEN LAKE DITCH (0700582) DWR↗☆ stopped 2025-08-03 (89+ days) — call at CLEAR CR PLATTE RIVER D curtailing 100% of its decreed rate [heuristic-strong, district-confirmed]
• MANHART DITCH (0700614) DWR↗☆ stopped 2025-06-23 (8+ days) — call at BLUNN RES curtailing 93% of its decreed rate [heuristic-partial, district-confirmed]
• CROKE CANAL (0700553) DWR↗☆ stopped 2025-06-14 (10+ days) — call at BLUNN RES curtailing 100% of its decreed rate [heuristic-partial, district-confirmed]
• CROKE CANAL (0700553) DWR↗☆ stopped 2025-04-07 (29+ days) — call at WANNAMAKER DITCH curtailing 100% of its decreed rate [heuristic-partial, district-confirmed]
• AGRICULTURAL DITCH (0700502) DWR↗☆ stopped 2024-11-01 (155+ days) — call at TUCKER RES curtailing 98% of its decreed rate [heuristic-partial, district-confirmed]
• FARMERS HIGHLINE CANAL (0700569) DWR↗☆ stopped 2024-11-01 (150+ days) — call at TUCKER RES curtailing 99% of its decreed rate [heuristic-partial, district-confirmed]
• FISHER DITCH (0700570) DWR↗☆ stopped 2024-11-01 (171+ days) — call at TUCKER RES curtailing 60% of its decreed rate [heuristic-partial, district-confirmed]
• CLEAR CR PLATTE RIVER D (0700547) DWR↗☆ stopped 2024-10-31 (151+ days) — call at TUCKER RES curtailing 63% of its decreed rate [heuristic-partial, district-confirmed]
• CHURCH DITCH (0700540) DWR↗☆ stopped 2024-10-04 (220+ days) — call at B H EATON DITCH curtailing 100% of its decreed rate [heuristic-partial]

DWR out-of-priority analysis (scoped structures)

Right yield — how often could these rights actually divert?

Share of irrigation-season days each structure's rights were not called out, derived from the 22-year district-scoped call record (senior right = floor, junior right = ceiling constraint). Call-record-derived; DWR's own analysis governs where available.

Abandonment radar (23 screens)

Absolute rights with 10+ years of no recorded diversions. Screens only — storage, alternate points, and plan operations can explain nonuse lawfully. And diversion REPORTING itself only reached its modern level ~1981 — idleness that begins before then may be unreported use, not nonuse (flagged † below).

• GOLDEN CITY WATER WORKS PIPELINE (0700575) DWR↗☆ (1860-02-25, 21.2 cfs decreed): last active 1952 — 73 years idle † predates modern reporting era — last recorded activity predates this basin's modern reporting era (~1981) -- early absence of record is weak evidence of nonuse
• 0700666 DWR↗☆ (1893-08-23, 5.0 cfs decreed): last active 1974 — 51 years idle † predates modern reporting era — last recorded activity predates this basin's modern reporting era (~1981) -- early absence of record is weak evidence of nonuse
• 0700581 DWR↗☆ (1863-05-21, 0.1 cfs decreed): last active 1980 — 45 years idle † predates modern reporting era — last recorded activity predates this basin's modern reporting era (~1981) -- early absence of record is weak evidence of nonuse
• 0703398 DWR↗☆ (1974-04-01, 0.0 cfs decreed): last active 1981 — 44 years idle
• 0704396 DWR↗☆ (1871-12-31, 0.0 cfs decreed): last active 1987 — 38 years idle
• SMALL STORAGE TANKS (0704079) DWR↗☆ (1988-07-01, 0.0 cfs decreed): last active 1991 — 34 years idle
• RHODES SOUTH DITCH (0700650) DWR↗☆ (1865-07-05, 2.8 cfs decreed): last active 1992 — 33 years idle
• LOWER LOVELAND SNOWMAKING & DOMESTIC DIVERSION (0700874) DWR↗☆ (1988-12-30, 11.0 cfs decreed): last active 1992 — 33 years idle
• LOVELAND BASIN RES (0703391) DWR↗☆ (1984-08-21, 0.0 cfs decreed): last active 1992 — 33 years idle
• LOVELAND VALLEY RES (0703392) DWR↗☆ (1984-08-21, 0.0 cfs decreed): last active 1992 — 33 years idle

Compliance screens (30 advisory flags)

Screened 83 of 1815 structures with rights (134 have diversion history on file). A flag is a lead for expert review — augmentation plans, exchanges, and free-river conditions can make over-decree diversions lawful and are deliberately not modeled.

• GOLDEN CITY WATER WORKS PIPELINE (0700575) DWR↗☆: Observed p99 daily rate 110.0 cfs (max 110.0) exceeds total decreed absolute 21.2 cfs across 1029 recorded day(s).
• 0700666 DWR↗☆: Observed p99 daily rate 49.0 cfs (max 68.0) exceeds total decreed absolute 5.0 cfs across 2950 recorded day(s).
• BLUNN RES (0703308) DWR↗☆: Observed p99 daily rate 32.1 cfs (max 416.6) exceeds total decreed absolute 15.1 cfs across 51491 recorded day(s).
• CROKE CANAL RALSTON CREEK DIVERSION (0700728) DWR↗☆: Observed p99 daily rate 19.0 cfs (max 19.1) exceeds total decreed absolute 0.1 cfs across 192 recorded day(s).
• KERSHAW DITCH (0700597) DWR↗☆: Observed p99 daily rate 13.0 cfs (max 16.0) exceeds total decreed absolute 11.4 cfs across 34138 recorded day(s).
• GOLDEN CITY DITCH (0700542) DWR↗☆: Observed p99 daily rate 11.2 cfs (max 49.6) exceeds total decreed absolute 11.1 cfs across 63001 recorded day(s).
• MANHART DITCH (0700614) DWR↗☆: Observed p99 daily rate 11.0 cfs (max 17.2) exceeds total decreed absolute 9.8 cfs across 32584 recorded day(s).
• CORT GRAVES HUGHES DITCH (0700551) DWR↗☆: Observed p99 daily rate 7.0 cfs (max 7.0) exceeds total decreed absolute 0.6 cfs across 18023 recorded day(s).
• APEX GULCH FEEDER D (0700717) DWR↗☆: Observed p99 daily rate 6.1 cfs (max 6.8) exceeds total decreed absolute 2.0 cfs across 6706 recorded day(s).
• OUELETTE DITCH (0700632) DWR↗☆: Observed p99 daily rate 6.0 cfs (max 11.0) exceeds total decreed absolute 1.1 cfs across 18892 recorded day(s).

Seniority (top structures by decreed rate)

Recent inventory & legal-document changes

• 2026-10-10 — call set: SOUTH FLAT DITCH (39707)
• 2026-10-10 — call set: STERLING IRR CO DITCH 1 (39706)
• 2026-10-10 — call released: 39612
• 2026-10-09 — call released: 39680
• 2026-10-09 — call set: SOUTH PLATTE RIVER AT WATERTON (39697)
• 2026-10-09 — call set: CHATFIELD RESERVOIR (39698)
• 2026-10-09 — call released: 39678
• 2026-10-08 — call set: TRUE WEBSTER DITCH (39693)

Water-court filings this month (division-wide)

24 applications in the 2026-08 resume for this basin's division — new rights, changes, augmentation plans — from the water clerk's statutory monthly notice (C.R.S. 37-92-302), the earliest public signal of a new claim. Filings are division-wide, not district-filtered: check the county column. Full resume PDF at the Judicial Branch →

Anyone affected may file a statement of opposition until 2026-10-31 (17 days left). C.R.S. 37-92-302(3): due by the last day of the second month following the filing month — computed, not legal advice; confirm with the water clerk.

Active substitute water supply plans in this district

Temporary State Engineer approvals to divert out of priority (37-92-308 / 37-90-137). A structure operating under one behaves differently under a call than its decreed rights alone suggest — the priority tables above don't know about these; this list does. Source: DWR’s active-SWSP register, refreshed nightly.

The water itself, in this district

Four registers, each on its own schedule: what USGS sensors read right now, where samples have been taken, which stretches the state lists as impaired, and how the tap water of the systems here stands with EPA. None is a DWR record; each links its own page.

Right now

Source Provisional telemetry · fetched 2026-10-14 · verify at USGS current conditions ↗

No USGS continuous water-quality sensor reports from inside this district. Statewide sensors →

Where water has been sampled

Source Register of another agency · fetched 2026-10-08 · verify at Water Quality Portal ↗

The portal lists 1,709 sampling stations in this district's watershed (Clear 10190004), of which 69 reported a sample in the last 5 years on the state and tribal side (USGS activity is in the station count, not in that figure). Most active: Colorado Dept. of Public Health & Environment-WQCD (44), Colorado River Watch (22), USGS Colorado Water Science Center (2). Most-sampled groups: Inorganics, Major, Metals, Physical, Nutrient, Information. Every station as a file ↗

Results themselves are not fetched here; USGS samples added after March 2024 may not be in the portal's legacy profiles yet.

Drinking water

Source Register of another agency · fetched 2026-10-07 · verify at EPA SDWIS ↗

27 community systems touch this district. 2 carry an open health-based violation on EPA's record. EPA sampled 10 of them for PFAS in 2023–25; none had PFOA or PFOS at or above the 2024 limit.

and 17 more; the full directory filters by district.

EPA's record carries violations and lead/copper percentiles; nitrate and disinfection by-product results are not in it. UCMR 5 samples are monitoring, not compliance, and the 2024 PFOA/PFOS limits equal its reporting limit, so any detection of those two is at or above them.

Water quality

31 of 49 assessed segments in this basin are on Colorado's impaired-waters list (2024 assessment), most often metals.

Where these stretches are

Show only the cleanup plans

Tap a stretch for its causes. A named creek appears more than once because CDPHE assesses it in separate units, so the map shows where a finding starts and stops rather than colouring a whole creek at once.

On the impaired-waters list

Each entry is one CDPHE assessment unit — a named, mapped stretch of stream, not the whole creek at once, which is why a single named creek can appear more than once with different findings above and below a tributary or discharge.

• Chase Gulch, mainstem and all tributaries Metals
• Chicago Creek, mainstem and all tributaries Metals Cleanup plan (TMDL)
• Clear Creek, all tributaries Metals Cleanup plan (TMDL)
• Clear Creek, all tributaries Metals Cleanup plan (TMDL)
• Clear Creek, mainstem Metals Cleanup plan (TMDL)
• Clear Creek, mainstem Metals Cleanup plan (TMDL)
• Clear Creek, mainstem MetalsTemperature Cleanup plan (TMDL)
• Clear Creek, mainstem Temperature
• Clear Creek, mainstem Temperature
• Clear Creek, mainstem MetalsSediment
• Clear Creek, mainstem AmmoniaMetalsPathogensSedimentTemperature
• Clear Creek, mainstem MetalsPathogensSedimentTemperature
• Clear Creek, mainstem and all tributaries Metals Cleanup plan (TMDL)
• Clear Creek, mainstem and all tributaries Metals Cleanup plan (TMDL)
• Clear Creek, mainstem and all tributaries Metals Cleanup plan (TMDL)
• Fall River, mainstem Metals Cleanup plan (TMDL)
• Gilson Gulch, mainstem and tributaries MetalsSolids chlorides sulfates Cleanup plan (TMDL)
• Gregory Gulch, Russell Gulch, and Silver Gulch, mainstem and all tributaries Metals Cleanup plan (TMDL)
• Leavenworth Creek, mainstem Metals Cleanup plan (TMDL)
• North Clear Creek, all tributaries Metals Cleanup plan (TMDL)
• North Clear Creek, mainstem MetalsTemperature Cleanup plan (TMDL)
• North Empire Creek MetalsSolids chlorides sulfates Cleanup plan (TMDL)
• Ralston Creek, mainstem and all tributaries Metals
• Ralston Creek, mainstem and all tributaries Pathogens
• Silver Creek Metals Cleanup plan (TMDL)
• South Clear Creek, mainstem Metals Cleanup plan (TMDL)
• South Clear Creek, mainstem and all tributaries Metals Cleanup plan (TMDL)
• Trail Creek, mainstem and all tributaries Metals Cleanup plan (TMDL)
• Turkey Gulch Metals Cleanup plan (TMDL)
• Virginia Canyon MetalsSolids chlorides sulfates
• West Fork of Clear Creek Metals Cleanup plan (TMDL)