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Lower Uncompahgre River

Division 4 · Water District 41
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Lower Uncompahgre River on the ground — the ditches, wells, reservoirs and gages of Water District 41 · clicktap anything for its record

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

5% of normal flow, week of 2026-06-29
26 calls active on it right now

The Uncompahgre River is critically low for late June -- 5% of normal flow, its 4th-driest such week in 88 years of record. 26 calls stand against it right now; the most senior right calling dates to 1878.

Full diagnostic snapshot pending — this district's weekly-style report (system status, active calls, hydrographs, anomaly flags) is produced by the nightly rotation and appears here after its first run. The tabs above are live now.

Groundwater

8,080 water-level measurements across 76 monitored well(s) — 64 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 28 well(s) with enough record for a trend test: 6 declining, 2 rising.

Fastest-declining wellsSettingft / decadeSpanp
LGRB-Poly 30 alluvial -2.87 10 yr 0.0491
NC04900936BA LGRB Poly 28 alluvial -2.79 11 yr 0.0051
LGRB-Poly 23 alluvial -2.74 10 yr 0.0042
NC05101035BD LGRB Poly 8 alluvial -2.64 12 yr 0.0236
LGRB-Poly 19 alluvial -2.1 10 yr 0.02
LGRB-Poly 6 alluvial -1.44 10 yr 0.0491

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.

FAIRVIEW INLET OFF THE SOUTH CANAL NEAR MONTROSE: 1 alluvial well(s) nearby; pooled water table -0.5 ft (2014–2024, decreasing, p=0.0491)

GARNET DITCH: 3 alluvial well(s) nearby; pooled water table -0.3 ft (2014–2024, no_trend, p=0.5915)

IRONSTONE CANAL NEAR OLATHE, CO: 3 alluvial well(s) nearby; pooled water table +1.2 ft (1976–2024, no_trend, p=0.0584)

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.

Topology cross-check: 4 parent disagreements (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 16 streams, 12 agree. Know this water? Tell us →

StreamThis site routes it toDWR routes it to
Coal Creek the mainstem Dry Creek
Montrose Arroyo the mainstem Cedar Creek
Dolores Creek the mainstem Happy Canyon Creek
Hairpin Creek the mainstem Cedar Creek
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