Saint Charles

Division 2 · Water District 15 · As of 2026-09-21 05:18 MDT · 3 weeks ago

Who may take water from the Saint Charles, who is calling for it today, and how it is running, compiled from Colorado Division of Water Resources records. Click anything on the map for its record.

Live · machine-built

Saint Charles on the ground — the ditches, wells, reservoirs and gages of Water District 15 · clicktap anything for its record

The well-permit cells in view, as a table

Each row is one ~1-mile cell (0.02°) with the permits the file spots inside it, split into water-supply permits and monitoring holes (DWR’s two monitoring categories: drilled to look at the water, not to pump it). These are permits, not wells: a permit is a piece of paper, and the file does not say which were drilled. Spotting is the file’s own, about a mile at best, which is why the cells are no finer.

Lat	Lon	Water-supply permits	Monitoring holes

Browse this district’s ditches, gages, reservoirs, wells and springs as a list.

6% of normal flow, week of 2026-09-21

1 call the record places on it, 17 unsettled

The Saint Charles River is critically low for late September -- 6% of normal flow, its 3rd-driest such week in 48 years of record. 1 call stands against it right now; the most senior right calling dates to 1866. DWR's statements do not settle whether 17 more calls reach it.

Schematic

Historical

Reconstruct conditions as of

Evolution of the network

Trends

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 2026-09-27 (the newest reading on file), flows at the 3 ranked gages are running at a median 100% of their own long-term norm for this window — 1 below a typical year, 2 at or above. Driest relative to its record: SAINT CHARLES RIVER AT VINELAND, ranking 2nd lowest of 48 years.

How this comparison is made

Each gage's mean flow over the 3 days either side of 2026-09-27, compared with the same window in every year of its own record — so a gage is only ever measured against itself, and gages with no record in the window are counted out rather than guessed.

Gage flow trend & changepoints

What counts as a trend here

Computed 2026-10-11 19:59 from 12 gage(s) with cached period-of-record data. The series is each gage's annual mean flow in cfs (years with ≥300 days of record). Mann-Kendall (trend, with the Hamed–Rao correction for serial correlation — persistence can otherwise fake significance) and Pettitt (changepoint) both require at least 8 years spanning at least 10 years of record. A gage below that reports no signal — which is not the same as “no change.” The %-per-decade figure is the same Sen slope divided by the gage's median annual flow, for comparing across streams of very different size; it is omitted for near-ephemeral channels where the median is too small to divide by honestly.

None of the 12 gages with enough record shows a significant trend or a detected shift — which is itself the finding.

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

No gage shows a statistically significant trend or changepoint yet.

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

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. 4 gage(s) and 65 structure(s) report in 2026, but structure reporting only reached half its modern level around ~1912. 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 †.

Decade	Gages with data (median yr)	Structures reporting (median yr)
1900s	0	12
1910s	0	53
1920s	1	58
1930s	1	72
1940s	1	65
1950s	0	55
1960s	0	49
1970s	2	78
1980s	1	73
1990s	1	58
2000s	2	71
2010s	4	69
2020s	4	65

Mass-balance (network closure) trend

Structure divrec-history backfill coverage as of the last check: 3% of 1861 schematic-relevant structures. 0 year(s) clear the 30% coverage gate so far -- 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 (1974–2025)

Mass-balance kinks computed for every summer month back to 1974 (135 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.

No reach shows a statistically significant long-term gain/loss shift.

Groundwater now has its own tab: 80 monitored well(s), water-table trends, stream corridors, and the advisory depletion screen.

Reservoirs now has its own tab: 9 reservoir(s), end-of-year storage back to 1950, click-to-chart histories.

Cross-gage pattern fingerprint

Over the 12-year window with full coverage (2015–2026), the dominant shared pattern across 3 gage(s) explains 57% of year-to-year variance (almost certainly a basin-wide climate/snowpack driver).

STCHARCO doesn't move with that shared pattern -- a real, localized signal (a new diversion, land-use change, or a gage-specific data problem) worth a closer look, not necessarily noise.

Data provenance & quality

Where these numbers come from and how far they can be trusted. Grade C (3/6 points) — the components below are the finding; the letter alone is not. Sources: DWR HydroBase snapshot HydroBase_CO_20260928 (imported 2026-10-04) for history, plus the CDSS REST API for current conditions.

Check	State	What was measured
gage freshness	stale	newest gage reading is 14 day(s) old (target 7)
diversion record	expected-lag	newest diversion record is 346 day(s) old (DWR publishes ~1 year in arrears)
structure coverage	sparse	3% of schematic structures have data

Independent check: PASS — 100.0000% agreement across 212,966 stored values re-checked against DWR's authoritative record (HydroBase_CO_20260707), over 20 structures. 0 disagreement(s) beyond a 0.01 cfs tolerance. Checked 2026-08-19; a rotating sample covers the whole basin across successive runs, and the structures this report cites are checked every time.

Federal cross-check: PASS — 99.95% day-level agreement with USGS's own published records for the same gages, across 8 co-listed station(s) and 36,555 overlapping days (within max(2%, 0.5 cfs) daily). Pre-1950 records at some gages carry known between-agency day-stamp and transcription differences — scored at each year's best ±1-day alignment; residual disagreement is real historical divergence, flagged for review.

12 gage(s) / 58,143 daily values (1923-03-01–2026-09-27); 182 structure(s) with diversion records; 704 with decreed rights. Methodology has not yet had independent expert review — treat every figure as an advisory screen, not an administrative or legal conclusion.

Groundwater

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

343 water-level measurements across 80 monitored well(s) — 18 alluvial, 0 bedrock — plus 5 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 1 well(s) with enough record for a trend test: 1 declining, 0 rising.

Fastest-declining wells	Setting	ft / decade	Span	p
▸ SC02106523ADC	alluvial	-2.65	44 yr	0.0316

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.

4,056 well permits on file — not decreed rights

81% household or domestic use

144 ft median depth, 2,975 wells reporting

66% are constructed wells; 7% tie to a decreed structure. A permit is permission to drill, not a water right; most here are exempt household wells. More in three things called “well”, or turn on the Well permits chip on the map above to see where they sit.

Permits issued here, by year

2,782 located water-supply permits with an issue date, 1948 to 2026; half of them had been issued by 1999, and the busiest year was 1972 with 135. The district’s 227 monitoring holes are counted apart: they are drilled to look, not to pump. A permit is not a well, and the year is the date the paper was issued, not a drilling date. The 4,056 above counts every permit on file here; 1,047 of them have no usable location or no issue date and are not in this chart.

Show the monitoring holes too (227; the scale changes)

water-supply permits issued that year monitoring holes, when shown 1 issued before 1950 is in the table, not the bars

The counts by year, as a table

Located well permits with an issue date in this district, by issue year. Monitoring holes are the two DWR monitoring categories; water-supply is everything else.
Year	Issued	Monitoring holes	Water-supply	Issued through that year
1948	1	0	1	1
1953	11	0	11	12
1954	11	0	11	23
1955	19	0	19	42
1956	5	0	5	47
1957	4	0	4	51
1958	3	0	3	54
1959	19	0	19	73
1960	33	0	33	106
1961	9	0	9	115
1962	3	0	3	118
1963	5	0	5	123
1964	9	0	9	132
1965	7	0	7	139
1966	12	0	12	151
1967	10	0	10	161
1968	13	0	13	174
1969	12	0	12	186
1970	11	0	11	197
1971	23	0	23	220
1972	135	0	135	355
1973	81	0	81	436
1974	21	0	21	457
1975	8	0	8	465
1976	21	0	21	486
1977	31	0	31	517
1978	39	0	39	556
1979	46	0	46	602
1980	40	0	40	642
1981	38	0	38	680
1982	31	0	31	711
1983	30	0	30	741
1984	39	0	39	780
1985	24	0	24	804
1986	24	0	24	828
1987	53	16	37	881
1988	17	0	17	898
1989	17	0	17	915
1990	31	7	24	946
1991	38	11	27	984
1992	26	1	25	1,010
1993	33	2	31	1,043
1994	34	0	34	1,077
1995	58	4	54	1,135
1996	75	8	67	1,210
1997	110	11	99	1,320
1998	88	14	74	1,408
1999	121	6	115	1,529
2000	120	7	113	1,649
2001	77	0	77	1,726
2002	138	4	134	1,864
2003	96	6	90	1,960
2004	70	6	64	2,030
2005	57	8	49	2,087
2006	87	0	87	2,174
2007	53	0	53	2,227
2008	48	3	45	2,275
2009	42	0	42	2,317
2010	28	1	27	2,345
2011	44	0	44	2,389
2012	30	2	28	2,419
2013	33	0	33	2,452
2014	32	0	32	2,484
2015	44	4	40	2,528
2016	68	28	40	2,596
2017	33	4	29	2,629
2018	48	5	43	2,677
2019	30	4	26	2,707
2020	55	4	51	2,762
2021	85	22	63	2,847
2022	36	5	31	2,883
2023	32	4	28	2,915
2024	56	30	26	2,971
2025	27	0	27	2,998
2026	11	0	11	3,009

Every district in the file on one scale · the whole file, one year at a time · Plate 4 of the Driller’s Atlas.

What drillers reached, township by township

14 PLSS townships here where at least 5 water-supply permits naming the same aquifer filed a depth (2,502 permits in all). Each column is one township, six miles square, on one scale to 1,100 ft below ground: a faint lane spans the 10th to 90th percentile of where the permits naming that aquifer stopped, the solid band their screens, the tick the median. This is the permit file’s view of the ground — the aquifer is the name the driller wrote, the band is where those holes ended — not a geologic map, and a township is as fine as it gets. Monitoring holes are left out. 5 of these townships straddle a district line and are filed here because most of their permits are.

T24S R68W
396

T25S R67W
301 · 74% here

T23S R68W
235

T24S R67W
220

T25S R68W
179 · 74% here

T23S R69W
174

T23S R65W
171

T23S R67W
169

T24S R69W
156 · 94% here

T24S R66W
155

T23S R66W
134

T22S R65W
116

T24S R65W
88 · 70% here

T22S R64W
8 · 69% here

unnamed other named faint = where the permits naming it stopped (10th–90th pct) · solid = their screens · tick = median · ft below ground as filed

Every township here, as a table

Water-supply permits by PLSS township and the aquifer named on them, where at least 5 filed a depth: percentiles of the depth drilled to and of the screen top and bottom (where at least 5 filed a screen), feet below ground as filed. The permit file’s view, not a geologic map.
Township	Share of its permits in this district	Aquifer named	Permits with a depth	Drilled depth p10 / p50 / p90, ft	Screen top p10 / p50 / p90, ft	Screen bottom p10 / p50 / p90, ft
T24S R68W 6th PM	99%	unnamed	391	43 / 110 / 396	29 / 90 / 365	60 / 150 / 455
T24S R68W 6th PM	99%	other named	5	60 / 209 / 217	—	—
T25S R67W 6th PM	74%	unnamed	294	40 / 96 / 260	21 / 56 / 156	55 / 90 / 294
T25S R67W 6th PM	74%	other named	7	90 / 161 / 480	24 / 75 / 378	86 / 161 / 480
T23S R68W 6th PM	98%	unnamed	226	14 / 100 / 554	12 / 220 / 545	20 / 265 / 627
T23S R68W 6th PM	98%	other named	8	158 / 408 / 630	—	—
T24S R67W 6th PM	98%	unnamed	199	46 / 190 / 522	30 / 150 / 438	56 / 202 / 500
T24S R67W 6th PM	98%	other named	18	130 / 243 / 518	80 / 194 / 345	130 / 234 / 522
T25S R68W 6th PM	74%	unnamed	177	50 / 100 / 201	38 / 70 / 130	63 / 104 / 204
T23S R69W 6th PM	98%	unnamed	174	41 / 125 / 382	26 / 69 / 350	60 / 152 / 423
T23S R65W 6th PM	97%	unnamed	160	150 / 342 / 527	105 / 280 / 482	172 / 322 / 534
T23S R65W 6th PM	97%	other named	11	265 / 465 / 505	186 / 420 / 455	238 / 465 / 501
T23S R67W 6th PM	97%	other named	12	114 / 277 / 359	50 / 208 / 303	110 / 258 / 387
T23S R67W 6th PM	97%	unnamed	157	166 / 330 / 616	110 / 280 / 585	181 / 340 / 630
T24S R69W 6th PM	94%	unnamed	156	40 / 149 / 290	25 / 104 / 225	73 / 160 / 280
T24S R66W 6th PM	97%	unnamed	143	113 / 500 / 660	82 / 432 / 563	219 / 520 / 663
T24S R66W 6th PM	97%	other named	12	346 / 530 / 644	238 / 450 / 471	335 / 510 / 644
T23S R66W 6th PM	98%	unnamed	122	125 / 284 / 509	80 / 240 / 405	148 / 283 / 445
T23S R66W 6th PM	98%	other named	11	280 / 401 / 559	152 / 324 / 491	235 / 374 / 523
T22S R65W 6th PM	97%	unnamed	90	66 / 505 / 566	235 / 450 / 523	320 / 505 / 560
T22S R65W 6th PM	97%	other named	26	408 / 525 / 588	417 / 490 / 553	495 / 525 / 576
T24S R65W 6th PM	70%	unnamed	82	287 / 488 / 605	245 / 383 / 565	305 / 485 / 625
T24S R65W 6th PM	70%	other named	6	482 / 515 / 580	—	—
T22S R64W 6th PM	69%	unnamed	6	95 / 702 / 1,028	—	—

These columns on the map · Plate 6 of the Driller’s Atlas.

The Driller’s Atlas · Plate 2 A cross-section nobody surveyed

Every permitted well within a few miles of the line, drawn from the ground to its drilled depth as the driller filed it. The bright part of each stroke is the perforated casing — where the well actually takes water — coloured by the aquifer named on the permit. Nobody arranged these; the aquifers arrange themselves.

Line Corridor

Hover or arrow through the strokes to read a well.

The same corridor as a table


Miles from A	Wells drawn	Median depth (ft)	With a screen	Most-named aquifer	No depth filed	Ground, ft above sea level (median)

Bins run from end A to end B of the line. “Most-named aquifer” is the family most often named on permits in the bin, with its count; permits naming no aquifer are the majority of the file and are not a family.

Reservoirs

Source DWR administrative record · verify at DWR structure records ↗

9 reservoir(s) with 2,308 storage measurement(s), 1950–2014. Basin storage as of 2013-10-31 (the record's own end — reservoir records publish ~annually): 893 AF across 1 reservoir(s).

Why storage matters to the flow network

Storage change is real water the mass balance must credit — a losing reach beside a filling reservoir isn't losing water, it's banking it.

Reservoir map — how full is each vessel?

What “full” is measured against

Bubble size is proportional to a reservoir's record-high storage. Fill is its last recorded storage as a share of its surveyed capacity (USACE National Inventory of Dams) where a confident NID match exists — the tooltip names the matched dam — and as a share of its own record high otherwise. A wrong capacity would be worse than an honest record high, so only confident joins upgrade.

A dashed teal ring marks reservoirs reporting live DWR telemetry: their fill reflects yesterday's storage, is drawn as a dotted tail on charts, and is treated as provisional until the next verified HydroBase snapshot supersedes it.

A dashed red ring marks a dam under an active storage restriction from DWR's Dam Safety branch — the State Engineer has limited how much it may legally store, so a low fill can be an order, not a drought. Hazard class and inspection condition come from the same record, joined only where the dam carries this reservoir's WDID or a confident NID match — a wrong dam's restriction would be worse than none shown.

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.

Reservoir	Last recorded storage (AF)	As of	Full	Dam (DWR Dam Safety)
▸ ST CHARLES RES NO 3 (1503829)	6,033	2000-10-30	—	—	dossier →
▸ ST CHARLES RES NO 2 (1503828)	2,047	2000-10-30	—	—	dossier →
▸ LAKE ISABEL (1503830)	1,069	1952-11-01	—	—	dossier →
▸ HAYDEN RESERVOIR (1503695)	893	2013-10-31	—	—	dossier →
▸ BONNIEMEADE RESERVOIR (1503694)	200	1997-05-20	—	—	dossier →
▸ CLARK RESERVOIR NO 1 (7903728)	100	1994-10-15	—	—	dossier →
▸ HICKLAND RESERVOIR NO 2 (1503696)	5	1997-07-01	—	—	dossier →
▸ NAUMANN POND (1503512)	0	2009-10-31	—	—	dossier →

Drought

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 3rd-driest week 39 in 48 years of record at SAINT CHARLES RIVER AT VINELAND (as of 2026-09-21; this week’s flow sits at the 6th percentile for the date). On this week’s US Drought Monitor, Custer County is 31% in D3 extreme drought (2026-10-06). The law agrees: the most senior active call leaves 98% of this district’s decreed flow rights junior to the calling right this week.

Every year since 1978, week by week

Each thin row is a year at SAINT CHARLES RIVER AT VINELAND; 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 39 weeks recorded so far, 2026’s weekly trace most resembles 2002 (mean gap 17.6 percentile points; next closest 1981 (19.0), 2006 (20.3)). 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 Custer, Pueblo 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 2005 — 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 (158 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.

This basin’s droughts, by its own record

Drought	Span	Weeks	Trough percentile	Flows recovered	Water table back
unnamed dry spell	2026-03-16 → 2026-09-21	27	18th (2026-07-20)	not yet	—
unnamed dry spell	2023-12-25 → 2024-05-20	21	23rd (2024-01-22)	2 weeks	—
the 2020-22 drought	2022-10-10 → 2023-08-14	44	11th (2023-02-20)	42 weeks	—
the 2020-22 drought	2020-09-07 → 2021-07-12	44	23rd (2020-10-12)	2 weeks	—
the 2012-13 drought	2014-02-03 → 2014-09-08	31	12th (2014-04-07)	0 weeks	—
the 2012-13 drought	2012-05-07 → 2013-11-11	79	5th (2013-07-08)	42 weeks	—
the 2012-13 drought	2010-12-06 → 2011-11-07	48	19th (2011-06-27)	147 weeks	—
unnamed dry spell	2005-10-24 → 2006-12-25	61	6th (2006-06-19)	27 weeks	—
the 2002 drought	2003-10-06 → 2004-08-23	46	6th (2004-02-02)	16 weeks	—
the 2002 drought	2002-04-01 → 2003-09-29	78	6th (2002-09-02)	63 weeks	—
unnamed dry spell	1989-09-18 → 1990-03-12	25	28th (1989-11-13)	35 weeks	—
the 1981 drought	1980-12-15 → 1981-10-19	44	18th (1981-05-18)	45 weeks	1 yr (5 wells)
the 1977 drought	1978-12-25 → 1979-07-16	29	10th (1978-12-25)	44 weeks	—

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 $3,076,450 in drought-caused claims across Custer, Pueblo counties — 6.5% of all insured crop losses there. The worst year was 2012 ($356,114).

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 (82 rights across 49 years of shared record), colored by that year’s wetness from the barcode above. Here the correlation is -0.21 — this basin tended to claim water in dry times, under scarcity pressure. 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.

Legal

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 ↗

7 systems touch this district (7 community systems reporting 128,166 people served, a figure that counts a wholesaler's customers twice); 1 of them carries an open health-based violation on EPA's record.

System	Serves	Source	Here
PUEBLO BOARD OF WW	114,070	Surface water	4% of its area
ST CHARLES MESA WD	9,690	Surface water	9% of its area
COLORADO CITY MD 2 open health-based	2,755	Surface water	100% of its area
RYE TOWN OF	745	Surface water	100% of its area
BEULAH WATER WORKS DISTRICT	445	Surface water	100% of its area
PINE DRIVE WD	416	Surface water	100% of its area
MOUNTAIN SHADOWS MOBILE ESTATES	45	Groundwater	100% of its area

Instream-flow rights held by the state

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

8 reaches over 53.3 miles, held by the Colorado Water Conservation Board so that water stays in the stream. Every reach, with its schedule and case →

Saint Charles River, 13.0 mi: 3 (1/1 - 12/31) cfs (appropriated 1976, 76W4435) · dossier
Greenhorn Creek, 6.8 mi: 1.5 (3/15 - 4/30), 4.75 (5/1 - 7/14), 0.85 (11/15 - 3/14), 1.5 (7/15 - 11/14) cfs (appropriated 1998, 98CW0154) · dossier
Middle Creek, 6.72 mi: 5.1 (4/1 - 8/31), 2.8 (9/1 - 3/31) cfs (appropriated 2010, 10CW0057) · dossier
Graneros Creek, 6.3 mi: 0.25 (1/1 - 12/31) cfs (appropriated 1998, 98CW0160) · dossier
Greenhorn Creek, 6.3 mi: 1.25 (7/1 - 3/31), 2.25 (4/1 - 6/30) cfs (appropriated 1998, 98CW0148) · dossier
Graneros Creek, 5.4 mi: 0.5 (3/15 - 4/30), 1.25 (5/1 - 8/14), 0.3 (12/1 - 3/14), 0.5 (8/15 - 11/30) cfs (appropriated 1998, 98CW0150) · dossier

and 2 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 1859-05-01 to 2022-12-13. Of the 20 structures with a yield estimate, the median one’s senior right was in priority 3% of a median irrigation season and 0% in a dry one. 25 abandonment screens and 58 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: 957 across 704 structure(s); 95 structure(s) carry 0 court-case references. Advisory reading aids on public DWR data — not administrative or legal conclusions.

Is the river getting harder to divert from?

Over 2003–2025, administration on this district has been tightening: 3 of 3 measures (days under call, calls set, seniority of the controlling call) are moving toward more administration, none the other way.

The three measures, year by year

One row per whole calendar year inside the call record's coverage (23 years); partly-covered years are omitted rather than reported as quiet. Trend is Mann-Kendall with the same significance gate as every other trend on this site. Counted from DWR's published call record, which begins in the early 2000s: earlier years are absent, not quiet. A rise in the number of calls set can also reflect how finely an administrator records one episode, which is why days under call -- insensitive to that -- is the component to read first. Advisory summary of the public record, not an administrative finding.

Year	Days under call	Calls set	Controlling priority (median)
2014	365	419	1866-05-01
2015	365	222	1865-10-07
2016	366	355	1862-04-30
2017	365	260	1866-10-31
2018	365	401	1862-04-30
2019	365	389	1862-03-20
2020	366	340	1861-05-31
2021	365	362	1862-04-30
2022	365	370	1862-11-15
2023	365	369	1862-04-30
2024	366	359	1862-04-30
2025	365	384	1862-04-30

Why diversions stopped — call-based explanations

Sustained diversion stops matched to senior administrative calls.

PIONEER MIDDLE CREEK (1500517) DWR↗ stopped 2025-08-31 (61+ days) — call at MODEL DITCH curtailing 100% of its decreed rate [heuristic-strong]
CARTER DITCH (1500557) DWR↗ stopped 2025-08-02 (16+ days) — call at TITSWORTH DITCH curtailing 100% of its decreed rate [heuristic-strong]
HIGHLINE DITCH (1500541) DWR↗ stopped 2025-07-07 (58+ days) — call at LEWELLING-MCCORMICK curtailing 100% of its decreed rate [heuristic-strong]
ROBINSON DITCH (1500549) DWR↗ stopped 2025-07-07 (21+ days) — call at LEWELLING-MCCORMICK curtailing 100% of its decreed rate [heuristic-strong]
SHURTZ DITCH (1500553) DWR↗ stopped 2025-07-07 (49+ days) — call at LEWELLING-MCCORMICK curtailing 100% of its decreed rate [heuristic-strong]
MESA DITCH (1500544) DWR↗ stopped 2025-07-06 (9+ days) — call at LEWELLING-MCCORMICK curtailing 100% of its decreed rate [heuristic-strong]
A J LAMB DITCH (1500567) DWR↗ stopped 2025-07-02 (121+ days) — call at TITSWORTH DITCH curtailing 100% of its decreed rate [heuristic-strong]
GRANEROS CANON DITCH (1500563) DWR↗ stopped 2025-06-15 (138+ days) — call at LUCERO DITCH curtailing 100% of its decreed rate [heuristic-strong]
DUNBAUGH DITCH (1500545) DWR↗ stopped 2025-06-10 (42+ days) — call at LUCERO DITCH curtailing 81% of its decreed rate [heuristic-partial]
A J LAMB DITCH (1500567) DWR↗ stopped 2025-06-04 (5+ days) — call at PULASKI DITCH curtailing 100% of its decreed rate [heuristic-strong]
PIONEER MIDDLE CREEK (1500517) DWR↗ stopped 2025-06-03 (5+ days) — call at PULASKI DITCH curtailing 71% of its decreed rate [heuristic-partial]
SHURTZ DITCH (1500553) DWR↗ stopped 2025-05-19 (18+ days) — call at HOEHNE DITCH curtailing 100% of its decreed rate [heuristic-strong]

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.

Structure	Senior priority	Senior right: median / dry yr	Junior right: median / dry yr
ST CHARLES FLOOD DITCH (1500522) DWR↗	1861-09-01	95.1% / 36.7%	0.0% / 0.0%
HAYDEN SUPPLY DITCH (1500537) DWR↗	1859-05-01	100.0% / 100.0%	0.0% / 0.0%
DOTSON DITCH NO 1 (1500507) DWR↗	1865-05-31	40.0% / 1.9%	0.0% / 0.0%
BRYSON DITCH (1500504) DWR↗	1883-10-31	0.0% / 0.0%	0.0% / 0.0%
GREENHORN HIGHLINE DITCH (1500539) DWR↗	1859-05-01	100.0% / 100.0%	0.0% / 0.0%
A J LAMB DITCH (1500567) DWR↗	1869-12-31	0.0% / 0.0%	0.0% / 0.0%
POLLARD DITCH (1500518) DWR↗	1866-12-15	15.2% / 0.0%	0.0% / 0.0%
HIGHLINE DITCH (1500541) DWR↗	1869-03-01	0.9% / 0.0%	0.0% / 0.0%
MIDDLE CREEK MIN FLOW - LOWER (1503008) DWR↗	2010-01-26	0.0% / 0.0%	0.0% / 0.0%
PIONEER MIDDLE CREEK (1500517) DWR↗	1866-06-30	23.6% / 0.0%	0.0% / 0.0%
RYE FISH HATCHERY P/L #2 (1500550) DWR↗	1939-09-15	0.0% / 0.0%	0.0% / 0.0%
SHURTZ DITCH (1500553) DWR↗	1868-04-01	4.4% / 0.0%	0.0% / 0.0%

Abandonment radar (25 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 ~1912 — idleness that begins before then may be unreported use, not nonuse (flagged † below).

GREENHORN HIGHLINE DITCH (1500539) DWR↗ (1859-05-01, 10.9 cfs decreed): last active 1934 — 91 years idle
FISHER CANON DITCH NO 2 (1500560) DWR↗ (1893-06-27, 2.0 cfs decreed): last active 1939 — 86 years idle
MEXICAN DITCH (1500585) DWR↗ (1867-02-20, 2.0 cfs decreed): last active 1957 — 68 years idle
MCDANIEL DITCH NO 3 (1500569) DWR↗ (1879-11-30, 0.1 cfs decreed): last active 1973 — 52 years idle
MOORE'S SPRING PIPELINE (1500617) DWR↗ (1906-06-30, 0.5 cfs decreed): last active 1973 — 52 years idle
DAVIS DITCH (1500533) DWR↗ (1873-06-01, 0.9 cfs decreed): last active 1974 — 51 years idle
COLORADO CITY WELL NO 3 (1505593) DWR↗ (1965-08-25, 0.6 cfs decreed): last active 1974 — 51 years idle
CRAWFORD & SMYTHE DITCH (1500531) DWR↗ (1870-03-01, 3.7 cfs decreed): last active 1975 — 50 years idle
PIERSON SPRING DITCH (1500619) DWR↗ (1868-05-01, 1.8 cfs decreed): last active 1975 — 50 years idle
IRON SPRINGS PIPELINE (1500642) DWR↗ (1901-12-31, 0.3 cfs decreed): last active 1982 — 43 years idle

Compliance screens (58 advisory flags)

Screened 105 of 704 structures with rights (117 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.

DOTSON DITCH NO 1 (1500507) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 26.2 cfs (max 266.0) exceeds total decreed absolute 26.0 cfs across 47152 recorded day(s).
A J LAMB DITCH (1500567) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 11.2 cfs (max 15.5) exceeds total decreed absolute 7.3 cfs across 7705 recorded day(s).
GREENHORN HIGHLINE DITCH (1500539) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 11.0 cfs (max 11.0) exceeds total decreed absolute 10.9 cfs across 2376 recorded day(s).
HICKLIN DITCH "A" (1500538) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 10.0 cfs (max 29.4) exceeds total decreed absolute 0.7 cfs across 38112 recorded day(s).
HICKLIN DITCH "B" (1500540) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 10.0 cfs (max 20.0) exceeds total decreed absolute 1.7 cfs across 2732 recorded day(s).
CRAWFORD & SMYTHE DITCH (1500531) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 6.0 cfs (max 8.0) exceeds total decreed absolute 3.7 cfs across 9180 recorded day(s).
STANLEY DITCH NO 1 (1500554) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 5.8 cfs (max 38.0) exceeds total decreed absolute 1.5 cfs across 5902 recorded day(s).
WAGNER DITCH (1500524) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 4.2 cfs (max 8.0) exceeds total decreed absolute 1.5 cfs across 10596 recorded day(s).
MARINCICH PUMP (1500525) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 4.2 cfs (max 4.6) exceeds total decreed absolute 0.8 cfs across 1454 recorded day(s).
CHASE DITCH (1500506) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 4.0 cfs (max 11.5) exceeds total decreed absolute 2.0 cfs across 7370 recorded day(s).

Seniority (top structures by decreed rate)

Structure	Senior priority date	Rights	Decreed abs (cfs)	Conditional?
ST CHARLES FLOOD DITCH (1500522) DWR↗	1861-09-01	16	1135.4	—
HAYDEN SUPPLY DITCH (1500537) DWR↗	1859-05-01	11	70.0	—
DOTSON DITCH NO 1 (1500507) DWR↗	1865-05-31	4	26.0	—
BRYSON DITCH (1500504) DWR↗	1883-10-31	3	11.6	—
GREENHORN HIGHLINE DITCH (1500539) DWR↗	1859-05-01	16	10.9	—
A J LAMB DITCH (1500567) DWR↗	1869-12-31	7	7.3	—
POLLARD DITCH (1500518) DWR↗	1866-12-15	2	6.0	—
HIGHLINE DITCH (1500541) DWR↗	1869-03-01	4	5.4	—
PIONEER MIDDLE CREEK (1500517) DWR↗	1866-06-30	4	5.1	—
MIDDLE CREEK MIN FLOW - LOWER (1503008) DWR↗	2010-01-26	1	5.1	—
RYE FISH HATCHERY P/L #2 (1500550) DWR↗	1939-09-15	1	5.0	—
SHURTZ DITCH (1500553) DWR↗	1868-04-01	6	4.9	—
GREENHORN CREEK MIN FLOW (1503003) DWR↗	1998-05-11	1	4.8	—
BRYSON PUMP NO 1 (1500757) DWR↗	1870-01-02	2	4.5	—
GREENHORN VALLEY DITCH (1500536) DWR↗	1859-05-01	14	4.2	—

Recent inventory & legal-document changes

2026-10-10 — call set: FORT LYON CANAL (39703)
2026-10-10 — call set: JOHN MARTIN RESERVOIR (39705)
2026-10-10 — call released: 39701
2026-10-10 — call released: 39694
2026-10-09 — call set: FORT LYON CANAL (39701)
2026-10-09 — call released: 39660
2026-10-09 — call released: 39675
2026-10-09 — call released: 39659

Water-court filings this month (division-wide)

3 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 (18 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.

All 3 filings, with excerpts

Case	What it asks	County	Excerpt
`2025CW3012`	plan for augmentation, new underground right	—	CASE NO. 2025CW3012; TITAN AU, INC., 8480 E. Orchard Rd., Suite 4900, Greenwood Village, CO 80111 (Please address all pleadings and inquiries regarding this matter to Applicant’s attorney: John T. Howe, Hoskin, Farina & Kampf, P.C., 200 Grand Avenue, Suite 400…
`2026CW3037` 1603718	—	—	CASE NO. 2026CW3037; MARIA LAKES GRAZING ASSOCIATION, LLC, c/o Donald E. Siecke, Manager, 7343 S. Alton Way, Ste. 100, Centennial, CO 80122 (Please address all pleadings and inquiries regarding this matter to Applicant’s attorneys: Karl D. Ohlsen, Beth Ann J. …
`2026CW3138`	reasonable diligence	OF REASONABLE DILIGENCE IN PARK	CASE NUMBER 2026CW3138 MICHAEL STALL, 77 Sugar Creek Center Blvd., # 210, Sugar Land, TX, 77478. Philip E. Lopez, Eric K. Trout, Fairfield and Woods, P.C., 1801 California St, Suite 2600, Denver, CO, 80202. APPLICATION FOR A FINDING OF REASONABLE DILIGENCE IN …

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.

Plan	Type	Status	Expires	Structure	Documents
KELLY BOND DUST SUPPRESSION - CWPDA	37-92-308(5) PLANS LESS THAN 5 YEARS	Approved	2027-02-28	1407849	plan file

Water quality

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 ↗

1 USGS sensor reports temperature, conductance, dissolved oxygen or turbidity from inside this district; provisional readings, never merged into the verified record.

Site	Temp °C	Cond µS/cm	DO mg/L	Turb FNU	As of
BESSEMER DITCH AT ST. CHARLES WD NEAR PUEBLO CO ↗	18.7	581		4	2026-10-14 02:45

Where water has been sampled

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

The portal lists 1,561 sampling stations in this district's watershed (Upper Arkansas 11020002), of which 65 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), USGS Colorado Water Science Center (11), Colorado River Watch (8). Most-sampled groups: Physical, Nutrient, Inorganics, Major, Non-metals, 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 ↗

7 community systems touch this district. 1 carries an open health-based violation on EPA's record. EPA sampled 2 of them for PFAS in 2023–25; none had PFOA or PFOS at or above the 2024 limit.

System	Serves	EPA record	PFAS (UCMR 5)	Lead, latest 90th pct
COLORADO CITY MD	2,755	2 open health-based	not sampled	0.001 mg/L
PUEBLO BOARD OF WW	114,070	clean, last 12 quarters	none detected	0.0023 mg/L
ST CHARLES MESA WD	9,690	clean, last 12 quarters	1 detected, under the limits	0.002 mg/L
RYE TOWN OF	745	11 of 12 quarters with a violation	not sampled	0.001 mg/L
BEULAH WATER WORKS DISTRICT	445	7 of 12 quarters with a violation	not sampled	0.0 mg/L
PINE DRIVE WD	416	11 of 12 quarters with a violation	not sampled	0.0015 mg/L
MOUNTAIN SHADOWS MOBILE ESTATES	45	1 of 12 quarters with a violation	not sampled	0.0018 mg/L

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.

Impaired waters

Source Register of another agency · verify at EPA ATTAINS ↗

The state's 303(d) impaired-waters list has not been joined to this basin's own watershed boundary yet, so nothing is shown rather than a guess; the basins with a join carry the full list here. Why the join is geometry, not a name match.

Call cascade

If a call were placed at a given seniority, which structures in this basin would be out of priority, and how much of their decreed rate would be curtailed? Computed from this basin's cached decrees.

What this does and doesn't model. Seniority arithmetic only: every right junior to the call is treated as curtailed. It does not model reach applicability — structures downstream of the calling point are not administered by it — and it applies no futile-call judgment. Read it as “who is junior to this date, and by how much,” not as a prediction of what the Division Engineer would actually order.

Pick a calling right

Real decrees from this basin, ordered by administration number — that is, by actual seniority. The years will look out of order, and that is correct: an administration number encodes the adjudication date as well as the appropriation date, so a right appropriated in 1970 can be administered ahead of one from 1950. A senior call curtails almost everything; a junior one curtails almost nothing.

Or enter an administration number directly

Administration number

DWR administration numbers encode appropriation and adjudication dates; lower is more senior.

This week's diagnostic

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System status

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Active river calls

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Hydrographs vs. historical envelope

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Anomaly flags

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Topology cross-check: 8 parent disagreements, 6 sizable streams not on this network (vs DWR's route framework — under review)

This flow network was built mechanically; DWR's Source Water Route Framework disagrees with it in the places below. Each row is a question a human reviewer has not yet answered — not an error verdict. Checked 13 streams, 5 agree. Know this water? Tell us →

Stream	This site routes it to	DWR routes it to
Arkansas River	the mainstem	no parent named
North Creek	the mainstem	Middle Creek
Middle Creek	the mainstem	North Saint Charles River
Squirrel Creek	the mainstem	North Saint Charles River
South Creek	the mainstem	Squirrel Creek
Graneros Creek	the mainstem	Greenhorn Creek
Cold Spring Creek	the mainstem	Greenhorn Creek
Little Graneros Creek	the mainstem	Graneros Creek

Sizable streams DWR maps here that this network does not carry:

Thomkins Arroyo (14 mi) · Stinking Arroyo (11 mi) · Spring Branch (10 mi) · Edson Arroyo (10 mi) · Beaver Creek (4 mi) · Amethyst Creek (4 mi)

Something wrong on this page? Tell us →

Saint Charles

Schematic

Historical

Evolution of the network

Trends

This year, in context

Gage flow trend & changepoints

How the measurement network itself changed

Mass-balance (network closure) trend

Reach gain/loss shifts (1974–2025)

Cross-gage pattern fingerprint

Data provenance & quality

Groundwater

Well map

3D aquifer x-ray

Water-table trends

Permits issued here, by year

What drillers reached, township by township

Reservoirs

Reservoir map — how full is each vessel?

Basin storage, end of each water year

Largest reservoirs on record

Drought

Right now

Every year since 1978, week by week

This year against its analogs

The Drought Monitor’s view since 2000

The law’s own drought gauge

This basin’s droughts, by its own record

What drought has cost here

When this basin claimed its water

Legal

Who serves it, who protects it

Public water systems here

Instream-flow rights held by the state

Is the river getting harder to divert from?

Why diversions stopped — call-based explanations

Right yield — how often could these rights actually divert?

Abandonment radar (25 screens)

Compliance screens (58 advisory flags)

Seniority (top structures by decreed rate)

Recent inventory & legal-document changes

Water-court filings this month (division-wide)

Active substitute water supply plans in this district

Water quality

The water itself, in this district

Right now

Where water has been sampled

Drinking water

Impaired waters

Call cascade

Pick a calling right

This week's diagnostic

System status

Active river calls

Hydrographs vs. historical envelope

Anomaly flags

Keep track of Colorado’s water?