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South Platte Cheesman to Denver Gage

Division 1 · Water District 8 · As of 2026-08-27 01:50 MDT
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334 gages · 23 active calls · Week of Aug 17–Aug 23, 2026 — 237 alerts, 481 warnings

⚠ This district is administered as part of the deployed South Platte product, whose modeled mainstem currently runs Denver gage → Greeley (the WD2 reach). The schematic and mass balance shown here are that combined product — this district's own upstream reach is not yet independently modeled. Calls, stations, and rights data ARE district-specific.

176,163 water-level measurements across 8961 monitored well(s) — 3556 alluvial, 2848 bedrock — plus 170 administered well(s) reporting metered pumping.

What is being counted

Observation wells and pumping wells are different populations and are never conflated: water levels come from monitored observation wells, and metered pumping comes from administered wells reporting through diversion records. Click any well to chart its own record.

Well map

3D aquifer x-ray

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

How the surfaces are built, and what they are not

Alluvial water table on top, Denver Basin members (Dawson, Denver, Arapahoe, Laramie–Fox Hills) stacked beneath where measured, interpolated from measured water levels. Units are never mixed; a surface exists only inside its own unit's well coverage, with no extrapolation; thin epochs are suppressed and say why. Vertical scale is exaggerated for readability and z is head elevation in feet. These are measured heads, not a calibrated groundwater model.

Water-table trends

Of 390 well(s) with enough record for a trend test: 174 declining, 57 rising.

Fastest-declining wellsSettingft / decadeSpanp
CASTLE PINES A-1 bedrock -307.81 28 yr 0.0
DB-106 CPNMD A-2 bedrock -266.68 32 yr 0.0
DB-106 CPNMD A-3 bedrock -258.69 32 yr 0.0
DB-113 DEN TECH CNTR, SOUTH bedrock -256.67 31 yr 0.0
JORDAN WELL bedrock -255.88 21 yr 0.0375
DB-118 CASTLE ROCK WELL 14 bedrock -253.52 35 yr 0.0
SC00606624ADA1 unknown -251.12 22 yr 0.0
DB-113 DEN TECH CNTR, NORTH bedrock -235.24 31 yr 0.0

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.

How the corridor is assembled

For each reach whose gain/loss has shifted (Trends tab): the wells within 2 miles of its anchoring gage, their pooled water-table history over the same era, and an advisory Glover screen of lagged stream depletion from nearby metered pumping. v1 proximity = distance to the reach's anchoring gage; segment-based reach join is a flagged upgrade.

BIG DRY CREEK AT MOUTH NEAR FORT LUPTON: 121 alluvial well(s) nearby; pooled water table +0.0 ft (1966–2025, no_trend, p=0.9685). Glover screen: 0.1 cfs of nearby metered alluvial pumping → est. lagged depletion 0.1–0.1 cfs (uncalibrated T/S ranges; flagged for SPDSS calibration, AWAS cross-check, and expert review — DWR's AWAS is the authority).

SOUTH PLATTE RIVER AT FORT LUPTON, CO.: 76 alluvial well(s) nearby; pooled water table +1.1 ft (1929–2025, no_trend, p=0.126). Glover screen: 3.2 cfs of nearby metered alluvial pumping → est. lagged depletion 2.8–3.1 cfs (uncalibrated T/S ranges; flagged for SPDSS calibration, AWAS cross-check, and expert review — DWR's AWAS is the authority).

FIRST CR BEL BUCKLEY RD, AT ROCKY MTN ARSENAL, CO: 62 alluvial well(s) nearby

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.