Huerfano River

Division 2 · Water District 79 · As of 2026-09-17 05:37 MDT · 4 weeks ago

Live · machine-built

Huerfano River on the ground — the ditches, wells, reservoirs and gages of Water District 79 · 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.

27% of normal flow, week of 2026-09-21

1 call the record places on it, 16 unsettled

The Huerfano R is well below normal for late September -- 27% of normal flow. 1 call stands against it right now; the most senior right calling dates to 1874. DWR's statements do not settle whether 16 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 6 ranked gages are running at a median 94% of their own long-term norm for this window — 5 below a typical year, 1 at or above. Driest relative to its record: SPANISH PEAKS FARM HEADGATE, ranking 1st lowest of 9 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 20:03 from 14 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.

Of the 14 gages with enough record, 1 is trending down and 0 up, and 1 carries a detected shift. The clearest is Huerfano River at Manzanares Xing, near Redwing, its annual mean flow changing -1.22 cfs per decade (-4.4% of its median annual flow) over 91 years (p=0.0008). The other 13 show no clear signal either way.

Gage	Trend	Change / decade cfs · % of median annual flow	Significance	Years	Changepoint
▸ Huerfano River at Manzanares Xing, near Redwing HURREDCO	↓ decreasing	-1.22 cfs -4.4%	p<0.001	91	~1949

13 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. 9 gage(s) and 153 structure(s) report in 2026, but structure reporting only reached half its modern level around ~1941. 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)
1910s	0	44
1920s	2	0
1930s	1	0
1940s	3	134
1950s	2	0
1960s	1	16
1970s	1	84
1980s	1	116
1990s	2	67
2000s	2	171
2010s	4	140
2020s	9	147

Mass-balance (network closure) trend

Structure divrec-history backfill coverage as of the last check: 11% of 1422 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 (1950–2026)

Mass-balance kinks computed for every summer month back to 1950 (144 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: 15 monitored well(s), water-table trends, stream corridors, and the advisory depletion screen.

Reservoirs now has its own tab: 15 reservoir(s), end-of-year storage back to 1950, click-to-chart histories.

Cross-gage pattern fingerprint

Over the 16-year window with full coverage (2011–2026), the dominant shared pattern across 3 gage(s) explains 60% of year-to-year variance (almost certainly a basin-wide climate/snowpack driver).

MEDDITCO 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	11% of schematic structures have data

Independent check: PASS — 100.0000% agreement across 208,780 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 — 100.00% day-level agreement with USGS's own published records for the same gages, across 6 co-listed station(s) and 33,233 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.

14 gage(s) / 81,790 daily values (1923-03-01–2026-09-27); 288 structure(s) with diversion records; 930 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 ↗

139 water-level measurements across 15 monitored well(s) — 5 alluvial, 0 bedrock — plus 0 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 2 well(s) with enough record for a trend test: 0 declining, 2 rising.

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.

1,404 well permits on file — not decreed rights

82% household or domestic use

164 ft median depth, 752 wells reporting

47% are constructed wells; 4% 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

1,147 located water-supply permits with an issue date, 1956 to 2026; half of them had been issued by 2002, and the busiest year was 1999 with 55. The district’s 80 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 1,404 above counts every permit on file here; 177 of them have no usable location or no issue date and are not in this chart.

Show the monitoring holes too (80; the scale changes)

water-supply permits issued that year monitoring holes, when shown

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
1956	5	0	5	5
1957	4	0	4	9
1960	1	0	1	10
1961	1	0	1	11
1965	2	0	2	13
1967	1	0	1	14
1969	2	0	2	16
1970	1	0	1	17
1971	1	0	1	18
1972	21	0	21	39
1973	4	0	4	43
1974	1	0	1	44
1976	1	0	1	45
1977	2	0	2	47
1978	2	0	2	49
1979	15	0	15	64
1980	10	0	10	74
1981	14	0	14	88
1982	17	0	17	105
1983	11	0	11	116
1984	16	0	16	132
1985	10	0	10	142
1986	11	0	11	153
1987	12	0	12	165
1988	11	0	11	176
1989	9	0	9	185
1990	4	0	4	189
1991	21	0	21	210
1992	12	0	12	222
1993	21	3	18	243
1994	22	3	19	265
1995	25	3	22	290
1996	43	4	39	333
1997	50	7	43	383
1998	42	6	36	425
1999	64	9	55	489
2000	45	2	43	534
2001	34	0	34	568
2002	43	0	43	611
2003	39	2	37	650
2004	50	12	38	700
2005	41	7	34	741
2006	35	0	35	776
2007	26	0	26	802
2008	21	0	21	823
2009	27	0	27	850
2010	13	0	13	863
2011	18	0	18	881
2012	37	10	27	918
2013	24	0	24	942
2014	19	0	19	961
2015	26	3	23	987
2016	28	0	28	1,015
2017	21	1	20	1,036
2018	34	7	27	1,070
2019	22	1	21	1,092
2020	18	0	18	1,110
2021	25	0	25	1,135
2022	21	0	21	1,156
2023	28	0	28	1,184
2024	15	0	15	1,199
2025	17	0	17	1,216
2026	11	0	11	1,227

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

16 PLSS townships here where at least 5 water-supply permits naming the same aquifer filed a depth (714 permits in all). Each column is one township, six miles square, on one scale to 1,600 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. 16 of these townships straddle a district line and are filed here because most of their permits are.

T27S R68W
98 · 61% here

T26S R70W
84 · 65% here

T25S R66W
75 · 84% here

T26S R67W
68 · 68% here

T27S R71W
62 · 66% here

T26S R69W
53 · 87% here

T27S R70W
46 · 80% here

T25S R70W
41 · 89% here

T25S R69W
37 · 89% here

T26S R66W
30 · 72% here

T27S R69W
30 · 83% here

T25S R71W
27 · 83% here

T28S R69W
22 · 69% here

T26S R68W
16 · 62% here

T27S R72W
13 · 52% here

T26S R71W
12 · 67% here

unnamed 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
T27S R68W 6th PM	61%	unnamed	94	30 / 116 / 604	23 / 80 / 462	62 / 167 / 684
T26S R70W 6th PM	65%	unnamed	82	19 / 58 / 121	12 / 26 / 73	34 / 74 / 176
T25S R66W 6th PM	84%	unnamed	74	122 / 385 / 648	97 / 321 / 567	158 / 400 / 641
T26S R67W 6th PM	68%	unnamed	65	29 / 62 / 1,502	20 / 110 / 1,158	39 / 170 / 1,534
T27S R71W 6th PM	66%	unnamed	62	19 / 71 / 203	10 / 30 / 100	47 / 101 / 260
T26S R69W 6th PM	87%	unnamed	53	21 / 79 / 489	16 / 35 / 272	44 / 81 / 564
T27S R70W 6th PM	80%	unnamed	45	40 / 100 / 427	18 / 60 / 276	56 / 175 / 411
T25S R70W 6th PM	89%	unnamed	41	60 / 210 / 585	35 / 70 / 308	61 / 150 / 508
T25S R69W 6th PM	89%	unnamed	36	16 / 86 / 260	15 / 34 / 89	48 / 101 / 286
T26S R66W 6th PM	72%	unnamed	28	24 / 69 / 559	12 / 41 / 416	31 / 174 / 645
T27S R69W 6th PM	83%	unnamed	29	36 / 201 / 536	24 / 60 / 314	81 / 220 / 434
T25S R71W 6th PM	83%	unnamed	27	44 / 160 / 381	32 / 105 / 325	70 / 175 / 453
T28S R69W 6th PM	69%	unnamed	22	70 / 206 / 698	35 / 115 / 477	72 / 378 / 675
T26S R68W 6th PM	62%	unnamed	16	20 / 98 / 1,123	46 / 210 / 474	72 / 300 / 952
T27S R72W 6th PM	52%	unnamed	13	13 / 40 / 141	14 / 27 / 56	24 / 76 / 174
T26S R71W 6th PM	67%	unnamed	11	34 / 55 / 240	—	—

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 ↗

15 reservoir(s) with 799 storage measurement(s), 1950–2013.

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)
▸ BRADFORD LAKE RESERVOIR (7903843)	810	1988-04-12	—	—	dossier →
▸ CRAEGER RESERVOIR (7903729)	500	1968-10-01	—	—	dossier →
▸ MOSCA DITCH AND RESERVOIR (7903751)	300	1969-10-01	—	—	dossier →
▸ J & M RESERVOIR (7903742)	240	1969-10-01	—	—	dossier →
▸ M PERRINO RESERVOIR (7903754)	175	1962-10-01	—	—	dossier →
▸ SIERRA BLANCA RES NO 1 (7903755)	150	1969-10-01	—	—	dossier →
▸ SHARPS ORCHARD RESERVOIR (7903710)	75	1969-10-01	—	—	dossier →
▸ ROACH RESERVOIR (7903886)	57	1968-10-01	—	—	dossier →

Snow and runoff

Source Independent agency measurement · fetched 2026-10-12 · verify at NRCS report generator ↗ Source Our computation, scored against a reference · NRCS forecast, graded here against the gage record

Snow-water equivalent, WY2027

SNOTEL site	Elev (ft)	SWE (in)	Median (in)	% of median	Typical peak

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.

Runoff outlook — Huerfano R nr Redwing

NRCS's final issue (2026-06-01) calls it even odds that at least 3 kAF arrives over 06-01 to 09-30 — 32% of a normal season; almost certainly at least 1, probably not more than 5. Our own record at this gage shows 2 kAF actually delivered. New forecasts begin in January. How to read these numbers →

The record-adjusted April benchmark

NRCS’s April issue (2026-04-01) called even odds at 4 kAF over 04-01 to 09-30. Re-anchoring that number on this river’s own history — how its April issues have verified, the winter’s baseflow, and the district’s April 1 snowpack — moves it to 3 kAF. The river delivered 4 kAF.

Computed by this site — not an NRCS number, and shown only because it earned it: replayed over 65 past seasons here (1978–2025), never seeing the year it predicts, the adjustment cut the typical April miss from 26% to 20%. At points where it does not beat NRCS, no adjusted number appears. Coefficients are frozen each August; the model never changes mid-season. Method and honest limits →

90% chance of at least	70% chance of at least	50% chance of at least	30% chance of at least	10% chance of at least	Normal	Observed
1	2	3	4	5	9	2

How good are these forecasts here? (1976–2025)

Grading every April issue against what the river then delivered, measured at this gage’s own record — 40 seasons: the median miss of the 50% forecast is 24%, with a low bias of 1%, and the observed volume landed inside the stated 10–90% band 83% 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 →

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 26th-driest week 39 in 95 years of record at HUERFANO R AT MANZANARES XING, NR REDWING, CO. (as of 2026-09-21; this week’s flow sits at the 27th percentile for the date). On this week’s US Drought Monitor, Huerfano County is 28% in D3 extreme drought (2026-10-06). The law agrees: the most senior active call leaves 80% of this district’s decreed flow rights junior to the calling right this week.

Every year since 1923, week by week

Each thin row is a year at HUERFANO R AT MANZANARES XING, NR REDWING, CO.; 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 2018 (mean gap 11.5 percentile points; next closest 1974 (17.1), 1950 (17.3)). 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 Huerfano county — 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 (777 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	2023-11-27 → 2024-07-29	35	22nd (2024-01-08)	5 weeks	—
the 2020-22 drought	2021-11-22 → 2022-10-10	46	22nd (2022-07-18)	4 weeks	—
the 2020-22 drought	2020-06-08 → 2021-07-26	59	11th (2020-09-07)	67 weeks	—
the 2018 drought	2018-07-16 → 2019-08-19	57	5th (2018-10-22)	0 weeks	—
the 2012-13 drought	2014-03-24 → 2014-10-06	28	22nd (2014-04-28)	100 weeks	—
the 2012-13 drought	2012-07-02 → 2013-12-02	74	4th (2013-04-15)	144 weeks	—
the 2012-13 drought	2011-06-20 → 2012-06-18	52	18th (2011-09-05)	220 weeks	—
unnamed dry spell	2009-11-30 → 2010-06-14	28	20th (2010-01-18)	14 weeks	—
unnamed dry spell	2007-02-26 → 2007-07-30	22	20th (2007-04-23)	3 weeks	—
unnamed dry spell	2006-06-12 → 2006-12-18	27	21st (2006-08-14)	35 weeks	—
the 2002 drought	2002-03-04 → 2003-09-08	79	4th (2002-10-21)	63 weeks	—
unnamed dry spell	2000-09-04 → 2001-06-11	40	14th (2000-11-27)	5 weeks	—
unnamed dry spell	1996-12-02 → 1997-05-12	23	20th (1997-01-06)	4 weeks	—
unnamed dry spell	1977-02-07 → 1979-07-30	129	8th (1979-01-22)	0 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.

When this basin claimed its water

Every bar is a year’s new appropriations (627 rights across 98 years of shared record), colored by that year’s wetness from the barcode above. Here the correlation is -0.06 — 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.

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 ↗

1 system touch this district (1 community system reporting 400 people served, a figure that counts a wholesaler's customers twice); none carries an open health-based violation on EPA's record.

System	Serves	Source	Here
GARDNER WATER AND SANITATION DIST	400	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 ↗

10 reaches over 35.3 miles and 3 natural lake levels, held by the Colorado Water Conservation Board so that water stays in the stream. Every reach, with its schedule and case →

Huerfano River, 8.2 mi: 4.1 (5/1 - 10/31), 2.7 (11/1 - 4/30) cfs (appropriated 2010, 10CW0090) · dossier
South Apache Creek, 4.5 mi: 1 (1/1 - 12/31) cfs (appropriated 1976, 76W4436) · dossier
Deep Creek, 4.0 mi: 1 (1/1 - 12/31) cfs (appropriated 1979, 79CW0126) · dossier
South Fork Huerfano River, 4.0 mi: 1 (1/1 - 12/31) cfs (appropriated 1979, 79CW0125) · dossier
Central Branch, 3.0 mi: 0.5 (1/1 - 12/31) cfs (appropriated 1979, 79CW0130) · dossier
Dutch Creek, 3.0 mi: 1 (1/1 - 12/31) cfs (appropriated 1979, 79CW0127) · dossier

and 7 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 1862-05-15 to 2021-09-30. Of the 20 structures with a yield estimate, the median one’s senior right was in priority 0% of a median irrigation season and 0% in a dry one. 25 abandonment screens and 112 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: 1096 across 930 structure(s); 139 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.

MEADOW DITCH (7900541) DWR↗ stopped 2025-10-26 (5+ days) — call at CHILILI DITCH curtailing 100% of its decreed rate [heuristic-strong]
BUTTE VALLEY DITCH (7900509) DWR↗ stopped 2025-10-19 (10+ days) — call at CHILILI DITCH curtailing 100% of its decreed rate [heuristic-strong]
BAXTER PIONEER DITCH (7900505) DWR↗ stopped 2025-10-08 (11+ days) — call at CANON HEIGHTS DITCH curtailing 100% of its decreed rate [heuristic-strong]
DAN MAHAN DITCH (7900533) DWR↗ stopped 2025-10-07 (12+ days) — call at CANON HEIGHTS DITCH curtailing 100% of its decreed rate [heuristic-strong]
GARCIA DITCH NO 2 (7900521) DWR↗ stopped 2025-09-28 (30+ days) — call at MARTIN DITCH [heuristic-strong]
BADITO & MARTIN DITCH 1 (7900503) DWR↗ stopped 2025-09-07 (54+ days) — call at CHILILI DITCH curtailing 100% of its decreed rate [heuristic-strong]
MANZANARES DITCH NO 1 (7900535) DWR↗ stopped 2025-09-02 (59+ days) — call at MODEL DITCH curtailing 100% of its decreed rate [heuristic-strong]
BURNS DITCH NO 2 (7900507) DWR↗ stopped 2025-08-20 (72+ days) — call at MODEL DITCH curtailing 100% of its decreed rate [heuristic-strong]
DAN MAHAN DITCH (7900533) DWR↗ stopped 2025-08-17 (21+ days) — call at HARDSCRABBLE DITCH curtailing 100% of its decreed rate [heuristic-strong]
PEDRO GOMEZ DITCH (7900524) DWR↗ stopped 2025-08-14 (21+ days) — call at HARDSCRABBLE DITCH curtailing 100% of its decreed rate [heuristic-strong]
JACK ALLEN DITCH (7900500) DWR↗ stopped 2025-08-13 (79+ days) — call at HARDSCRABBLE DITCH curtailing 100% of its decreed rate [heuristic-strong]
JACK ALLEN DITCH (7900500) DWR↗ stopped 2025-07-20 (7+ days) — call at MODEL 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
CLARK FLOOD DITCH NO 2 (7900813) DWR↗	1906-09-01	0.0% / 0.0%	0.0% / 0.0%
MONTEZ DITCH (7900550) DWR↗	1867-04-25	8.2% / 0.0%	0.0% / 0.0%
CLARK FLOOD DITCH NO 1 (7900782) DWR↗	1906-05-01	0.0% / 0.0%	0.0% / 0.0%
PALMER DITCH (7900554) DWR↗	1871-04-06	0.0% / 0.0%	0.0% / 0.0%
RAHN DITCH (MEDINA NO2) (7900590) DWR↗	1867-06-01	8.2% / 0.0%	0.0% / 0.0%
EPIFANIO DITCH (7900722) DWR↗	1889-02-15	0.0% / 0.0%	0.0% / 0.0%
DEUS PIONEER DITCH (7900513) DWR↗	1874-06-15	0.0% / 0.0%	0.0% / 0.0%
PIEDRAS AMERILLAS D (PA) (7900764) DWR↗	1877-04-01	0.0% / 0.0%	0.0% / 0.0%
NO 1 IRRIGATION DITCH (7900552) DWR↗	1881-05-03	0.0% / 0.0%	0.0% / 0.0%
J E DIEZ DITCH (7900737) DWR↗	1873-03-20	0.0% / 0.0%	0.0% / 0.0%
BUTTE VALLEY DITCH (7900509) DWR↗	1862-05-15	78.9% / 24.8%	0.0% / 0.0%
HAMLET DITCH (7900526) DWR↗	1866-05-01	27.6% / 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 ~1941 — idleness that begins before then may be unreported use, not nonuse (flagged † below).

WEST DITCH (7900747) DWR↗ (1886-03-20, 2.0 cfs decreed): last active 1949 — 76 years idle
PINO DITCH (7901106) DWR↗ (1862-05-30, 3.6 cfs decreed): last active 1960 — 65 years idle
SOUTH POINT DITCH (7900731) DWR↗ (1868-05-31, 1.0 cfs decreed): last active 1973 — 52 years idle
BROSSARD DITCH (7900713) DWR↗ (1910-04-20, 1.5 cfs decreed): last active 1975 — 50 years idle
CLARK FLOOD DITCH NO 2 (7900813) DWR↗ (1906-09-01, 32.5 cfs decreed): last active 1979 — 46 years idle
MONTOYA DITCH (7900694) DWR↗ (1880-02-03, 0.5 cfs decreed): last active 1980 — 45 years idle
S D J MARTINEZ DITCH (7900763) DWR↗ (1909-05-15, 0.2 cfs decreed): last active 1980 — 45 years idle
EAGLE NEST FALLS DITCH (7900749) DWR↗ (1910-04-30, 3.0 cfs decreed): last active 1983 — 42 years idle
RAFAEL GARCIA DITCH (7900522) DWR↗ (1868-05-01, 4.8 cfs decreed): last active 1986 — 39 years idle
PERINO DITCH (7900695) DWR↗ (1901-06-01, 0.6 cfs decreed): last active 1987 — 38 years idle

Compliance screens (112 advisory flags)

Screened 158 of 930 structures with rights (166 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.

CLARK FLOOD DITCH NO 1 (7900782) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 31.5 cfs (max 31.5) exceeds total decreed absolute 17.5 cfs across 259 recorded day(s).
RAFAEL GARCIA DITCH (7900522) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 10.0 cfs (max 10.0) exceeds total decreed absolute 4.8 cfs across 1658 recorded day(s).
J M MURRAY DITCH (7900670) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 9.2 cfs (max 15.4) exceeds total decreed absolute 1.5 cfs across 8601 recorded day(s).
PINEDA DITCH NO 2 (7900696) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 9.0 cfs (max 9.0) exceeds total decreed absolute 3.0 cfs across 3256 recorded day(s).
C W DITCH (7900718) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 8.9 cfs (max 9.8) exceeds total decreed absolute 4.0 cfs across 5810 recorded day(s).
D K L M & P DITCH (7900789) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 8.6 cfs (max 8.6) exceeds total decreed absolute 8.6 cfs across 1340 recorded day(s).
GLADE DITCH (7900663) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 7.9 cfs (max 260.6) exceeds total decreed absolute 2.0 cfs across 9801 recorded day(s).
MOLLA DITCH (7900548) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 7.0 cfs (max 7.3) exceeds total decreed absolute 3.0 cfs across 4202 recorded day(s).
MEDINA FELIPA DITCH (7900543) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 6.8 cfs (max 7.5) exceeds total decreed absolute 5.2 cfs across 14964 recorded day(s).
ZAN DITCH (7900812) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 6.8 cfs (max 12.6) exceeds total decreed absolute 6.0 cfs across 9966 recorded day(s).

Seniority (top structures by decreed rate)

Structure	Senior priority date	Rights	Decreed abs (cfs)	Conditional?
CLARK FLOOD DITCH NO 2 (7900813) DWR↗	1906-09-01	1	32.5	—
MONTEZ DITCH (7900550) DWR↗	1867-04-25	3	28.4	—
CLARK FLOOD DITCH NO 1 (7900782) DWR↗	1906-05-01	1	17.5	—
PALMER DITCH (7900554) DWR↗	1871-04-06	3	14.0	—
RAHN DITCH (MEDINA NO2) (7900590) DWR↗	1867-06-01	4	11.2	—
EPIFANIO DITCH (7900722) DWR↗	1889-02-15	3	10.4	—
DEUS PIONEER DITCH (7900513) DWR↗	1874-06-15	3	10.3	—
NO 1 IRRIGATION DITCH (7900552) DWR↗	1881-05-03	1	10.0	—
PIEDRAS AMERILLAS D (PA) (7900764) DWR↗	1877-04-01	2	10.0	—
BUTTE VALLEY DITCH (7900509) DWR↗	1862-05-15	4	9.0	—
J E DIEZ DITCH (7900737) DWR↗	1873-03-20	7	9.0	—
HAMLET DITCH (7900526) DWR↗	1866-05-01	5	8.8	—
PEDRO GOMEZ DITCH (7900524) DWR↗	1865-06-01	5	8.6	—
D K L M & P DITCH (7900789) DWR↗	1887-11-02	1	8.6	—
PINEDA DITCH (7900714) DWR↗	1870-04-06	2	8.0	—

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 (19 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
HIGH MESA RANCH	37-92-308(5) PLANS LESS THAN 5 YEARS	Pending	—	7907804	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 2026-10-12 · 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 339 sampling stations in this district's watershed (Huerfano 11020006), of which 28 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 (18), Colorado River Watch (10). Most-sampled groups: Inorganics, Major, Metals, Nutrient, Physical, Biological, Counts. 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 ↗

1 community system touch this district. None carries an open health-based violation on EPA's record. EPA sampled 0 of them for PFAS in 2023–25.

System	Serves	EPA record	PFAS (UCMR 5)	Lead, latest 90th pct
GARDNER WATER AND SANITATION DIST	400	12 of 12 quarters with a violation	not sampled	0.0 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

Loading…

System status

Loading…

Active river calls

Loading…

Hydrographs vs. historical envelope

Loading…

Anomaly flags

Loading…

Runoff outlook — Huerfano R nr Redwing: even odds of at least 3 kAF over 06-01 to 09-30 — 32% of a normal season, per NRCS, issued 2026-06-01 — the season’s final; new forecasts begin in January. Full snow & runoff picture — charts, forecast history and how the forecasts have verified →

Sites, exceedance bands and sources

Huerfano R nr Redwing — 06-01 to 09-30 volume, thousand acre-feet (chance the volume is AT LEAST this):

90%	70%	50%	30%	10%	Normal
1	2	3	4	5	9

Snow-water equivalent and medians (1991–2020) from NRCS SNOTEL; seasonal volume forecasts from the NRCS National Water and Climate Center. Sites and forecast points are assigned to the district whose boundary contains them — snowpack that feeds this district can also sit in a neighboring headwater district. Toggle the Snow chip on the map above to see the sites.

Topology cross-check: 7 parent disagreements, 12 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 24 streams, 17 agree. Know this water? Tell us →

Stream	This site routes it to	DWR routes it to
Custer Creek	the mainstem	Turkey Creek
Maes Creek	the mainstem	Turkey Creek
Bruff Creek	the mainstem	Muddy Creek
Dutch Creek	the mainstem	South Fork Huerfano River
Yellowstone Creek (AKA Piedras Amerillas Creek)	the mainstem	South Oak Creek
Rio Alto Creek	the mainstem	Muddy Creek
West Turkey Creek	the mainstem	Custer Creek

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

Muddy Creek (19 mi) · Dog Springs Arroyo (19 mi) · Greasewood Arroyo (14 mi) · Butte Creek (9 mi) · Manzanares Creek (9 mi) · Mustang Arroyo (7 mi) · Ojo de Alamo Arroyo (7 mi) · Pine Arroyo (6 mi)

Something wrong on this page? Tell us →

Huerfano River

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 (1950–2026)

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

Snow and runoff

Snow-water equivalent, WY2027

Runoff outlook — Huerfano R nr Redwing

The record-adjusted April benchmark

How good are these forecasts here? (1976–2025)

Drought

Right now

Every year since 1923, 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

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 (112 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?