Divide Creek

Evolution of the network

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 2026-07-06 (the newest reading on file), flows at the 6 ranked gages are running at a median 18% of their own long-term norm for this window — 5 below a typical year, 1 at or above. Driest relative to its record: MULTA-TRINA DITCH NEAR SILT CO, ranking 1st lowest of 21 years.

Gage flow trend & changepoints

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 †.

Mass-balance (network closure) trend

Structure divrec-history backfill coverage as of the last check: 14% of 1945 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 72% 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.

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).

Reservoir map — how full is each vessel?

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.

Source Our computation, no independent reference · computed here from the screened DWR record Source Independent agency measurement · fetched 2026-09-08 · verify at U.S. Drought Monitor ↗

Right now

This is the 2nd-driest week 27 in 71 years of record at WEST DIVIDE CREEK NEAR RAVEN, CO (as of 2026-06-29; this week’s flow sits at the 3rd percentileRank against the record: a river at its 5th percentile is lower than it was in 95 of the past 100 years on this same date. for the date). On this week’s US Drought Monitor, Garfield County is 34% in D4 exceptional drought (2026-09-08). 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 27 weeks recorded so far, 2026’s weekly trace most resembles 2021 (mean gap 13.2 percentile points; next closest 2018 (15.0), 1963 (30.5)). 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 (1582 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

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 +0.24 — 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.

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 2026-09-08 · 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.

Instream-flow rights held by the state

Source Register of another agency · fetched 2026-09-08 · 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 100% 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 callA senior water right demanding its water, which requires everyone junior on that stream to stop diverting until it is satisfied., calls set, seniorityColorado shares water by date: the earlier the right, the stronger its claim when the river runs short. "First in time, first in right." of the controlling call) are moving toward more administration, none the other way.

Why diversions stopped — call-based explanations

Sustained diversion stops matched to senior administrative calls.

• CAMP BIRD DITCH (4500538) DWR↗☆ stopped 2023-09-30 (197+ days) — call at ATKINSON 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.

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)

Recent inventory & legal-document changes

• 2026-09-03 — call set: WARE AND HINDS DITCH (39395)
• 2026-09-03 — call released: 39195
• 2026-09-03 — call released: 39214

Water-court filings this month (division-wide)

11 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 (48 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.

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.

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 2026-09-13 · 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 2026-09-09 · verify at Water Quality Portal ↗

The portal lists 2,357 sampling stations in this district's watershed (Colorado Headwaters-Plateau 14010005), of which 162 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 (State) (80), USGS Colorado Water Science Center (40), Colorado River Watch (40). Most-sampled groups: Physical, Nutrient, Organics, Pesticide, Inorganics, Minor, Metals. 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 2026-09-09 · 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.

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.

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.

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.