Divide Creek

Division 5 · Water District 45 · As of 2026-10-01 05:04 MDT · 3 weeks ago

Who may take water from the Divide Creek, 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

Divide Creek on the ground — the ditches, wells, reservoirs and gages of Water District 45 · 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

7 calls the record places on it, 18 unsettled

The West Divide Creek is critically low for late September -- 6% of normal flow, its 7th-driest such week in 71 years of record. 7 calls stand against it right now; the most senior right calling dates to 1882. DWR's statements do not settle whether 18 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 2026-09-30 (the newest reading on file), flows at the 4 ranked gages are running at a median 36% of their own long-term norm for this window — 4 below a typical year, 0 at or above. Driest relative to its record: CLEAR FORK FEEDER DITCH NEAR CLEAR FORK, CO, ranking 1st lowest of 10 years.

How this comparison is made

Each gage's mean flow over the 3 days either side of 2026-09-30, 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 2026-10-20 17:59 from 9 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 9 gages with enough record shows a significant trend or a detected shift — which is itself the finding.

No gage shows a statistically significant trend or changepoint yet.

9 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. 7 gage(s) and 99 structure(s) report in 2026, but structure reporting only reached half its modern level around ~1985. 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	1
1930s	1	0
1940s	1	0
1950s	1	0
1960s	1	0
1970s	3	39
1980s	3	161
1990s	3	307
2000s	6	168
2010s	7	107
2020s	7	96

Mass-balance (network closure) trend

Structure divrec-history backfill coverage as of the last check: 14% of 1938 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 (1967–2026)

Mass-balance kinks computed for every summer month back to 1967 (205 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: 44 monitored well(s), water-table trends, stream corridors, and the advisory depletion screen.

Reservoirs now has its own tab: 82 reservoir(s), end-of-year storage back to 1976, 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 74% of year-to-year variance (almost certainly a basin-wide climate/snowpack driver).

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

Data provenance & quality

Where these numbers come from and how far they can be trusted. Grade D (2/6 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 20 day(s) old (target 7)
diversion record	stale	newest diversion record is 1815 day(s) old (DWR publishes ~1 year in arrears)
structure coverage	sparse	14% of schematic structures have data

Independent check: PASS — 100.0000% agreement across 91,146 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 — 99.48% day-level agreement with USGS's own published records for the same gages, across 3 co-listed station(s) and 50,580 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.

Upstream revisions: DWR's HydroBase_CO_20260928 image changed 109 previously-published historical value(s) across 1 structure(s) in this basin. The revised record now governs; every change is logged, none swapped silently.

9 gage(s) / 84,932 daily values (1939-06-01–2026-09-30); 502 structure(s) with diversion records; 1378 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 ↗

178 water-level measurements across 44 monitored well(s) — 24 alluvial, 5 bedrock — plus 28 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 4 well(s) with enough record for a trend test: 2 declining, 0 rising.

Fastest-declining wells	Setting	ft / decade	Span	p
▸ WS-35	bedrock	-12.61	46 yr	0.015
▸ WS-36	bedrock	-2.54	26 yr	0.0307

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.

3,493 well permits on file — not decreed rights

59% household or domestic use

121 ft median depth, 2,130 wells reporting

47% are constructed wells; 16% 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

2,137 located water-supply permits with an issue date, 1956 to 2026; half of them had been issued by 1998, and the busiest year was 2000 with 120. The district’s 938 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 3,493 above counts every permit on file here; 418 of them have no usable location or no issue date and are not in this chart.

Show the monitoring holes too (938; 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	1	0	1	1
1958	2	0	2	3
1960	6	0	6	9
1961	2	0	2	11
1962	1	0	1	12
1963	1	0	1	13
1964	6	0	6	19
1965	3	0	3	22
1966	3	0	3	25
1967	3	0	3	28
1968	4	0	4	32
1969	2	0	2	34
1970	2	0	2	36
1971	5	0	5	41
1972	35	0	35	76
1973	20	0	20	96
1974	16	0	16	112
1975	11	0	11	123
1976	7	0	7	130
1977	12	0	12	142
1978	32	0	32	174
1979	62	0	62	236
1980	72	0	72	308
1981	114	0	114	422
1982	48	3	45	470
1983	25	3	22	495
1984	48	0	48	543
1985	35	25	10	578
1986	23	4	19	601
1987	36	1	35	637
1988	27	1	26	664
1989	40	9	31	704
1990	74	19	55	778
1991	29	6	23	807
1992	38	12	26	845
1993	51	10	41	896
1994	78	22	56	974
1995	92	45	47	1,066
1996	143	64	79	1,209
1997	122	47	75	1,331
1998	174	102	72	1,505
1999	139	67	72	1,644
2000	150	30	120	1,794
2001	101	7	94	1,895
2002	93	12	81	1,988
2003	53	9	44	2,041
2004	55	12	43	2,096
2005	58	21	37	2,154
2006	113	77	36	2,267
2007	79	22	57	2,346
2008	85	17	68	2,431
2009	85	62	23	2,516
2010	52	29	23	2,568
2011	65	42	23	2,633
2012	39	27	12	2,672
2013	57	20	37	2,729
2014	35	20	15	2,764
2015	25	8	17	2,789
2016	19	3	16	2,808
2017	18	6	12	2,826
2018	12	0	12	2,838
2019	36	17	19	2,874
2020	39	16	23	2,913
2021	43	18	25	2,956
2022	32	6	26	2,988
2023	27	8	19	3,015
2024	24	8	16	3,039
2025	19	1	18	3,058
2026	17	0	17	3,075

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

13 PLSS townships here where at least 5 water-supply permits naming the same aquifer filed a depth (1,545 permits in all). Each column is one township, six miles square, on one scale to 400 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. 8 of these townships straddle a district line and are filed here because most of their permits are.

T6S R92W
639 · 53% here

T7S R95W
200 · 92% here

T7S R92W
168

T6S R94W
163 · 85% here

T7S R96W
98 · 50% here

T6S R90W
52 · 94% here

T7S R94W
47

T7S R93W
46

T8S R96W
43 · 78% here

T7S R91W
41

T8S R92W
22

T8S R91W
17 · 93% here

T7S R90W
9 · 75% 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
T6S R92W 6th PM	53%	unnamed	632	50 / 100 / 240	29 / 65 / 170	50 / 100 / 240
T7S R95W 6th PM	92%	other named	11	95 / 140 / 145	65 / 100 / 110	95 / 140 / 145
T7S R95W 6th PM	92%	unnamed	189	98 / 168 / 240	60 / 115 / 180	100 / 162 / 238
T7S R92W 6th PM	100%	unnamed	158	73 / 160 / 347	40 / 80 / 238	76 / 160 / 320
T7S R92W 6th PM	100%	other named	9	120 / 200 / 362	20 / 50 / 94	116 / 190 / 244
T6S R94W 6th PM	85%	unnamed	159	79 / 140 / 211	44 / 109 / 170	83 / 140 / 203
T7S R96W 6th PM	50%	unnamed	94	30 / 60 / 128	20 / 40 / 96	33 / 52 / 120
T6S R90W 6th PM	94%	unnamed	52	34 / 118 / 220	30 / 50 / 121	60 / 112 / 220
T7S R94W 6th PM	99%	unnamed	47	44 / 168 / 248	66 / 113 / 174	83 / 160 / 220
T7S R93W 6th PM	100%	unnamed	46	72 / 165 / 300	40 / 100 / 232	73 / 175 / 300
T8S R96W 6th PM	78%	unnamed	43	93 / 180 / 336	45 / 135 / 260	90 / 180 / 300
T7S R91W 6th PM	100%	unnamed	39	42 / 127 / 207	25 / 50 / 112	42 / 120 / 184
T8S R92W 6th PM	97%	unnamed	22	57 / 132 / 352	35 / 54 / 315	45 / 120 / 355
T8S R91W 6th PM	93%	unnamed	17	6 / 125 / 317	11 / 62 / 129	25 / 126 / 213
T7S R90W 6th PM	75%	unnamed	9	42 / 68 / 168	26 / 38 / 55	45 / 58 / 105

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 ↗

82 reservoir(s) with 975 storage measurement(s), 1976–2011. Basin storage as of 2010-12-02 (the record's own end — reservoir records publish ~annually): 333 AF across 2 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)
▸ BARTON PORTER RESERVOIR (4503603)	310	2009-10-31	—	—	dossier →
▸ ANDERSON POND NO 1 (4503524)	292	2005-10-31	—	—	dossier →
▸ BUD NO 2 DITCH (4500531)	220	2005-10-31	—	—	dossier →
▸ CENTENIAL LAKE (4503642)	192	2004-10-31	—	—	dossier →
▸ BATTLEMENT MESA POND (4505409)	75	2004-10-31	—	—	dossier →
▸ GARDNER-WERHONIG RESERVOIR NO. 1 (4503712)	52	1990-09-05	—	—	dossier →
▸ BATTLEMENT NO 3 RES (4503574)	47	1990-09-05	—	—	dossier →
▸ ALSBURY RESERVOIR (4503695)	42	2009-08-02	—	—	dossier →

Drought

Source Our computation, no independent reference · computed here from the screened DWR record Source Independent agency measurement · fetched 2026-10-13 · verify at U.S. Drought Monitor ↗

Right now

This is the 7th-driest week 39 in 71 years of record at WEST DIVIDE CREEK NEAR RAVEN, CO (as of 2026-09-21; this week’s flow sits at the 6th percentile for the date). On this week’s US Drought Monitor, Mesa County is 48% in D3 extreme drought (2026-10-13). The law agrees: the most senior active call leaves 99% of this district’s decreed flow rights junior to the calling right this week.

Every year since 1955, week by week

Each thin row is a year at WEST DIVIDE CREEK NEAR RAVEN, 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 11.2 percentile points; next closest 2021 (16.3), 2020 (22.7)). The analog’s remainder is drawn as context — its ending is what happened to it, not a forecast for this year.

The Drought Monitor’s view since 2000

Mean share of area in each class across Garfield, Mesa 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 2002 — 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 (1585 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	2025-06-16 → 2026-04-13	43	9th (2025-12-08)	not yet	—
the 2020-22 drought	2021-07-12 → 2022-01-10	26	18th (2021-09-13)	70 weeks	—
the 2020-22 drought	2020-06-29 → 2021-04-05	40	8th (2020-12-14)	110 weeks	—
the 2018 drought	2018-08-13 → 2019-02-18	27	10th (2018-10-01)	0 weeks	—
the 2018 drought	2017-09-25 → 2018-03-26	26	19th (2018-01-01)	2 weeks	—
the 2012-13 drought	2012-09-03 → 2014-06-16	93	15th (2013-05-06)	7 weeks	—
the 2002 drought	2001-10-22 → 2005-05-30	188	11th (2002-10-21)	3 weeks	—
the 2002 drought	2000-10-30 → 2001-06-11	32	28th (2001-03-26)	210 weeks	—
unnamed dry spell	1990-01-01 → 1991-05-20	72	17th (1990-05-14)	9 weeks	—
the 1981 drought	1981-05-18 → 1981-11-02	24	27th (1981-06-22)	9 weeks	—
the 1981 drought	1980-02-18 → 1980-07-28	23	20th (1980-04-21)	3 weeks	—
the 1977 drought	1977-01-03 → 1978-07-31	82	4th (1977-07-11)	0 weeks	—
unnamed dry spell	1968-01-22 → 1968-08-05	28	17th (1968-04-22)	1 week	—
the 1963-64 drought	1963-02-04 → 1964-08-10	79	18th (1963-07-01)	4 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 (999 rights across 72 years of shared record), colored by that year’s wetness from the barcode above. Here the correlation is +0.25 — this basin tended to claim water after wet years, when the supply had just shown itself. 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 ↗

6 systems touch this district (6 community systems reporting 27,869 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
RIFLE CITY OF	9,489	Surface water	24% of its area
GLENWOOD SPRINGS CITY OF	9,428	Surface water	22% of its area
BATTLEMENT MESA MD	4,100	Surface water	75% of its area
SILT TOWN OF	3,536	Surface water	29% of its area
APPLE TREE PARK	1,160	Groundwater	88% of its area
RIVERBEND WATER AND SEWER COMPANY	156	Groundwater	100% of its area

Instream-flow rights held by the state

Source Register of another agency · fetched 2026-10-18 · verify at CWCB instream flow program ↗

9 reaches over 55.6 miles, held by the Colorado Water Conservation Board so that water stays in the stream. Every reach, with its schedule and case →

Baldy Creek, 9.7 mi: 6.5 (4/1 - 6/30), 0.6 (7/1 - 3/31) cfs (appropriated 2008, 08CW0099) · dossier
East Divide Creek, 9.51 mi: 3 (4/1 - 4/15), 7.2 (4/16 - 6/30), 3 (7/1 - 7/31), 1.1 (8/1 - 3/31) cfs (appropriated 2014, 14CW3158) · dossier
West Divide Creek, 8.44 mi: 14.1 (4/16 - 7/15), 4.2 (7/16 - 7/31), 1.14 (8/1 - 3/14), 4.2 (3/15 - 4/15) cfs (appropriated 2014, 14CW3152) · dossier
Beaver Creek, 8.11 mi: 4.75 (5/1 - 6/30), 2.85 (7/1 - 7/31), 1 (8/1 - 11/30), 0.7 (12/1 - 4/30) cfs (appropriated 2014, 14CW3148) · dossier
Battlement Creek, 5.15 mi: 6.3 (4/1 - 6/30), 5 (7/1 - 7/31), 2 (8/1 - 3/31) cfs (appropriated 2008, 08CW0098) · dossier
North Fork Wallace Creek, 4.78 mi: 2.8 (4/1 - 7/15), 1.1 (7/16 - 3/31) cfs (appropriated 2008, 08CW0101) · dossier

and 3 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 1880-04-01 to 2024-07-09. Of the 20 structures with a yield estimate, the median one’s senior right was in priority 69% of a median irrigation season and 0% in a dry one. 25 abandonment screens and 216 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: 1757 across 1378 structure(s); 308 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 1988–2025, 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 (38 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	184	1884-04-07
2015	365	256	1885-07-28
2016	366	237	1884-04-26
2017	365	330	1884-05-01
2018	365	290	1884-03-02
2019	365	165	1886-08-09
2020	366	221	1883-03-30
2021	365	218	1883-03-15
2022	365	201	1885-06-01
2023	365	120	1885-07-28
2024	366	164	1886-08-09
2025	365	232	1885-06-16

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
DIVIDE CREEK HIGHLINE D (4500576) DWR↗	1900-05-05	67.8% / 0.0%	2.8% / 0.0%
BLUESTONE VALLEY DITCH (4500969) DWR↗	1895-01-01	32.5% / 0.0%	5.4% / 0.0%
GOLDMAN DITCH PUMP & PL (4500845) DWR↗	1880-04-01	100.0% / 100.0%	4.9% / 0.0%
PORTER DITCH (4500725) DWR↗	1885-10-15	69.4% / 0.0%	2.8% / 0.0%
TALLMADGE AND GIBSON D (4500790) DWR↗	1885-08-14	69.8% / 0.0%	2.8% / 0.0%
LAST CHANCE DITCH (4500668) DWR↗	1887-03-23	69.4% / 0.0%	2.8% / 0.0%
MULTA-TRINA DITCH (4500704) DWR↗	1906-09-01	31.6% / 0.0%	2.8% / 0.0%
LARKIN DITCH (4500861) DWR↗	1888-04-01	32.5% / 0.0%	5.4% / 0.0%
TAUGHENBAUGH DITCH (4500793) DWR↗	1885-07-28	79.7% / 0.9%	5.4% / 0.0%
MURRAY AND YULE DITCH (4500705) DWR↗	1881-06-10	100.0% / 100.0%	2.8% / 0.0%
EAST DIVIDE CREEK DITCH (4500584) DWR↗	1882-08-09	100.0% / 29.0%	31.6% / 0.0%
BEAVER CR GRASS MESA D (4500519) DWR↗	1892-05-16	69.2% / 0.0%	31.6% / 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 ~1985 — idleness that begins before then may be unreported use, not nonuse (flagged † below).

EAKEN DITCH NO 2 (4500579) DWR↗ (1916-04-01, 0.4 cfs decreed): last active 1980 — 31 years idle † predates modern reporting era — last recorded activity predates this basin's modern reporting era (~1985) -- early absence of record is weak evidence of nonuse
VINAL HAYWARD PIPELINE (4500805) DWR↗ (1940-07-15, 2.5 cfs decreed): last active 1980 — 31 years idle † predates modern reporting era — last recorded activity predates this basin's modern reporting era (~1985) -- early absence of record is weak evidence of nonuse
HAYWARD AND WYATT PL (4500623) DWR↗ (1950-02-02, 12.7 cfs decreed): last active 1982 — 29 years idle † predates modern reporting era — last recorded activity predates this basin's modern reporting era (~1985) -- early absence of record is weak evidence of nonuse
FAIRVIEW MESA DITCH (4500597) DWR↗ (1955-08-01, 10.0 cfs decreed): last active 1983 — 28 years idle † predates modern reporting era — last recorded activity predates this basin's modern reporting era (~1985) -- early absence of record is weak evidence of nonuse
NORMANS SPRINGS NO 1 (4500938) DWR↗ (1921-12-31, 0.0 cfs decreed): last active 1984 — 27 years idle † predates modern reporting era — last recorded activity predates this basin's modern reporting era (~1985) -- early absence of record is weak evidence of nonuse
EMS WELL (4505034) DWR↗ (1966-06-30, 0.1 cfs decreed): last active 1985 — 26 years idle
MCPHERSON WATER WELL (4500683) DWR↗ (1962-05-15, 1.0 cfs decreed): last active 1986 — 25 years idle
PEISAR SPRING DITCH (4500718) DWR↗ (1940-05-01, 0.5 cfs decreed): last active 1986 — 25 years idle
UPTON SPRING A (4500872) DWR↗ (1980-03-31, 0.0 cfs decreed): last active 1986 — 25 years idle
UPTON SPRING B (4500873) DWR↗ (1980-03-31, 0.0 cfs decreed): last active 1986 — 25 years idle

Compliance screens (216 advisory flags)

Screened 424 of 1378 structures with rights (451 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.

MULTA-TRINA DITCH (4500704) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 56.8 cfs (max 75.6) exceeds total decreed absolute 49.8 cfs across 30156 recorded day(s).
RISING SUN DITCH (4500743) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 46.3 cfs (max 80.0) exceeds total decreed absolute 20.9 cfs across 21416 recorded day(s).
J T PEARCE DITCH (4500643) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 38.3 cfs (max 41.2) exceeds total decreed absolute 5.0 cfs across 826 recorded day(s).
LARKIN DITCH (4500861) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 38.2 cfs (max 64.9) exceeds total decreed absolute 37.3 cfs across 30274 recorded day(s).
TAUGHENBAUGH DITCH (4500793) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 37.3 cfs (max 52.2) exceeds total decreed absolute 32.6 cfs across 13241 recorded day(s).
W A SKELTON DITCH (4500806) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 36.4 cfs (max 37.2) exceeds total decreed absolute 10.0 cfs across 2668 recorded day(s).
HIGHLINE ALKALI DITCH (4500627) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 31.0 cfs (max 31.0) exceeds total decreed absolute 17.2 cfs across 3526 recorded day(s).
WEST DIVIDE CREEK DITCH (4500818) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 18.1 cfs (max 22.6) exceeds total decreed absolute 10.9 cfs across 10834 recorded day(s).
COTTONWOOD GULCH DITCH (4500558) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 17.0 cfs (max 19.5) exceeds total decreed absolute 6.5 cfs across 7956 recorded day(s).
CLEAR CREEK DITCH (4500550) DWR↗: Observed p99 daily rate 15.1 cfs (max 16.9) exceeds total decreed absolute 7.7 cfs across 9881 recorded day(s).

Seniority (top structures by decreed rate)

Structure	Senior priority date	Rights	Decreed abs (cfs)	Conditional?
DIVIDE CREEK HIGHLINE D (4500576) DWR↗	1900-05-05	3	155.0	yes
BLUESTONE VALLEY DITCH (4500969) DWR↗	1895-01-01	4	106.0	—
GOLDMAN DITCH PUMP & PL (4500845) DWR↗	1880-04-01	6	103.5	—
PORTER DITCH (4500725) DWR↗	1885-10-15	7	62.5	—
TALLMADGE AND GIBSON D (4500790) DWR↗	1885-08-14	11	56.1	—
LAST CHANCE DITCH (4500668) DWR↗	1887-03-23	5	54.8	yes
MULTA-TRINA DITCH (4500704) DWR↗	1906-09-01	2	49.8	—
LARKIN DITCH (4500861) DWR↗	1888-04-01	4	37.3	—
TAUGHENBAUGH DITCH (4500793) DWR↗	1885-07-28	5	32.6	—
MURRAY AND YULE DITCH (4500705) DWR↗	1881-06-10	7	31.1	—
EAST DIVIDE CREEK DITCH (4500584) DWR↗	1882-08-09	6	25.2	—
BEAVER CR GRASS MESA D (4500519) DWR↗	1892-05-16	3	24.6	—
MINEOTA DITCH (4500693) DWR↗	1882-05-25	9	23.5	—
MOSQUITO DITCH (4500699) DWR↗	1914-06-09	3	23.5	—
BATTLEMENT DITCH (4500514) DWR↗	1884-06-12	7	20.9	—

Recent inventory & legal-document changes

2026-10-17 — call set: COOLEY L E NO 2 DITCH (39749)
2026-10-17 — call released: 39194
2026-10-17 — call released: 38756
2026-10-16 — call set: SHOSHONE POWER PLANT (39739)
2026-10-16 — call released: 38795
2026-10-16 — call released: 39690
2026-10-16 — call released: 39253
2026-10-15 — call set: BEAVER CREEK STOCKWATER (39726)

Water-court filings this month (division-wide)

10 applications in the 2026-09 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 2026-11-30 (39 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 10 filings, with excerpts

Case	What it asks	County	Excerpt
`2026CW3048`	—	—	CASE NO. 2026CW3048; Previous Case Nos. 20CW3005, 13CW3044, 01CW68 and 84CW178 – BOARD OF WATER WORKS OF PUEBLO, COLORADO, Attention: Executive Director, 319 West Fourth Street, Pueblo, Colorado 81003 (Please address all pleadings and inquiries regarding this …
`26CW3086`	change of water right	GRAND	26CW3086 GRAND COUNTY -RECTOR FAMILY LIMITED LIABILITY LIMITED PARTNERSHIP, MIKE RECTOR, GENERAL PARTNER (5 Inverness Dr. East, Englewood, CO 80112; mhr@rimop.com; 303-570-5174), c/o Valissa Tsoucaris, Esq., Tsoucaris Law, LLC, 3000 Holly Street, Denver, CO 80…
`26CW3097`	reasonable diligence	PITKIN	26CW3097 PITKIN COUNTY, COLORADO; COLORADO RIVER OR ITS TRIBUTARIES. WOODY CREEK COMMUNE 1, LLC; WOODY CREEK COMMUNE 2, LLC; WOODY CREEK COMMUNE 3, LLC; and WOODY CREEK COMMUNE 4, LLC, Colorado limited liability companies; c/o Danielle L. Van Arsdale, Esq., Wo…
`26CW3098`	reasonable diligence	GRAND	26CW3098 GRAND COUNTY. Ritschard Springs Association, P.O. Box 1594, Kremmling, CO 80459, c/o Kaitlin Randall and Kent Whitmer, JVAM PLLC, PO Box 878, Glenwood Springs, CO 81602, (970) 922 -2122. APPLICATION FOR FINDING OF SEPTEMBER 2026 RESUME WATER DIVISION …
`26CW3099`	reasonable diligence	GARFIELD	26CW3099 GARFIELD COUNTY, COLORADO, A SPRING TRIBUTARY TO THE COLORADO RIVER . S Bar Lazy S Enterprises LLC, P.O. Box 809, Silt, Colorado 81652. Please direct all correspondence to Jeffrey J. Conklin and Danielle T. Skinner of Karp Neu Hanlon, P.C., P.O. Drawe…
`26CW3100`	reasonable diligence	PITKIN	26CW3100 PITKIN COUNTY – ROARING FORK RIVER AND ITS TRIBUTARIES. RUSSELL WIGHT c/o Paul L. Noto and John Sittler, Patrick, Miller & Noto, P.C., 229 Midland Ave., Basalt, CO 81621 (970) 920-1030. APPLICATION FOR FINDINGS OF REASONABLE DILIGENCE. First Claim: Wi…
`26CW3101`	reasonable diligence, make absolute	GARFIELD	26CW3101 GARFIELD COUNTY, CANYON CRK, COLORADO RIVER. App for Reasonable Diligence and To Make Absolute. Ross Jeffery c/o Sherry Caloia, PO Box 443, Glenwood Sprgs 81602. Name: Ross Hydro, decreed in 20CW002 on 10/11/2020. Desc: 1 or more pipelines in NW¼ NE¼ …
`26CW3102`	—	GRAND	26CW3102 GRAND COUNTY . Moose Ridge Association, c/o Robin Tieman, President, 4075 Nassau Pl., Boulder, CO 80301. Applicant is represented by Kaitlin Randall and Kent Whitmer, JVAM PLLC, PO Box 878, Glenwood Springs, CO 81602, (970) 922 - 2122. APPLICATION FOR…
`26CW3105`	reasonable diligence	PITKIN	26CW3105 PITKIN COUNTY, COLORADO. WATER RIGHT TRIBUTARY TO THE ROARING FORK RIVER. Application for Findings of Reasonable Diligence. Aspen Skiing Company, LLC, c/o Kylie J. Crandall, Esq., Mark E. Hamilton, Esq., HOLLAND & HART LLP, 600 E. Main St., Suite 104,…
`26CW3107`	reasonable diligence	EAGLE	26CW3107 EAGLE COUNTY, COLORADO, GROUNDWATER TRIBUTARY TO LAKE CREEK, TRIBUTARY TO THE EAGLE RIVER, TRIBUTARY TO THE COLORADO RIVER. WLC1003 LLC, 1003 Lake Creek Road, Edwards, Colorado 81632. Please direct all correspondence to Michael J. Sawyer and Erika S. …

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
DEBEQUE GRAVEL PIT	37-90-137(11) GRAVEL PIT PLAN	Approved	—	—	plan file
5 MILE GRAVEL PIT DRMS M 2016-026	37-90-137(11) GRAVEL PIT PLAN	Pending	—	—	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 2026-10-22 · 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 2,357 sampling stations in this district's watershed (Colorado Headwaters-Plateau 14010005), of which 161 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 (79), USGS Colorado Water Science Center (40), Colorado River Watch (40). Most-sampled groups: Physical, Inorganics, Major, Metals, Nutrient, Organics, Pesticide. 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 ↗

6 community systems touch this district. None carries an open health-based violation on EPA's record. EPA sampled 3 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
RIFLE CITY OF	9,489	11 of 12 quarters with a violation	none detected	0.0014 mg/L
GLENWOOD SPRINGS CITY OF	9,428	clean, last 12 quarters	none detected	0.001 mg/L
BATTLEMENT MESA MD	4,100	5 of 12 quarters with a violation	none detected	0.0028 mg/L
SILT TOWN OF	3,536	2 of 12 quarters with a violation	not sampled	0.002 mg/L
APPLE TREE PARK	1,160	clean, last 12 quarters	not sampled	0.0028 mg/L
RIVERBEND WATER AND SEWER COMPANY	156	clean, last 12 quarters	not sampled	0.0039 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: 6 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 22 streams, 16 agree. Know this water? Tell us →

Stream	This site routes it to	DWR routes it to
West Mamm Creek	the mainstem	Middle Mamm Creek
Alkali Creek	the mainstem	West Divide Creek
Gibson Gulch	the mainstem	Divide Creek
West Divide Creek	the mainstem	Divide Creek
East Divide Creek	the mainstem	Divide Creek
Little Beaver Creek	the mainstem	West Divide Creek

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

Horsethief Creek (11 mi) · Wallace Creek (11 mi) · Porcupine Creek (8 mi) · Pete and Bill Creek (7 mi) · Ramsey Gulch (6 mi) · Monument Gulch (6 mi) · Cottonwood Creek (6 mi) · Spring Creek (6 mi)

Something wrong on this page? Tell us →

Divide Creek

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 (1967–2026)

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

Drought

Right now

Every year since 1955, 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?

Right yield — how often could these rights actually divert?

Abandonment radar (25 screens)

Compliance screens (216 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?