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Lesson C3 · The Ledger · records & administration

Anatomy of a call

Who places a call, what it says, and what it does — read from the district's real call record.

A callA senior water right demanding its water, which requires everyone junior on that stream to stop diverting until it is satisfied. is the priority system switching on. It is also, concretely, a small administrative record with a handful of fields — and once you can read one, the abstract machinery of lessons A1–A4 becomes something that happened last Tuesday.

Senior short of water calls SET who · structure · controlling priority (an admin number) stands STANDING rights junior to that number are curtailed recovers RELEASED season ends the controlling priority tightens in a hot August, relaxes after a storm — scarcity priced in dates
A call is the priority system switching on, recorded as a handful of fields. The operative one is the controlling priority — an admin number; every right junior to it on the reach owes curtailment while the call stands. Watch that number move through a season and you are watching the river’s scarcity priced in dates.

The lifecycle

A senior user short of water contacts the water commissioner; the division engineer’s office sets the call, recording who called, from which structure, and — the operative field — the controlling priority: an admin number (lesson A5). While the call stands, rights junior to that number on the administered reach owe curtailment, subject to everything in lesson A4. When the river recovers or the season ends, the call is released. The controlling priority moves with conditions — a hot August tightens it, a storm relaxes it — and watching that number through a season is watching the river’s scarcity priced in dates.

The district’s real record: recent calls

SetReleasedCalling structureSourceControlling priority
2026-10-16 standing FARMERS IRRIGATION CANAL BIG THOMPSON RIVER 1881-02-01 (11355.00000)
2026-10-16 standing WESTERN MUTUAL DITCH SOUTH PLATTE RIVER 1909-06-09 (21709.00000)
2026-10-16 standing PREWITT INLET CANAL SOUTH PLATTE RIVER 1936-01-13 (31423.29219)
2026-10-14 2026-10-16 STERLING IRR CO DITCH 1 SOUTH PLATTE RIVER 1936-01-13 (31423.29219)
2026-10-14 2026-10-16 SOUTH PLATTE RIVER AT WATERTON SOUTH PLATTE RIVER 1868-03-03 (6637.00000)
2026-10-14 standing BURLINGTON D RIVER HEADGATE SOUTH PLATTE RIVER 1885-11-20 (13108.00000)
2026-10-14 2026-10-14 STERLING IRR CO DITCH 1 SOUTH PLATTE RIVER 1901-02-16 (18674.00000)
2026-10-14 standing BLUNN RES RALSTON CREEK 1861-06-06 (4175.00000)

Calls from the cached Division 1 record that can lawfully reach Clear Creek (WD7): calls naming only other districts are dropped; calls stating no district are kept, because unstated means unknown, never “affects nothing” — and DWR only began stating affected districts around 2015. “Standing” means no release is recorded in our snapshot — check DWR for current status.

What this does not let you conclude

The call record says what was set, not everything that was administered: reach scoping, futile-call judgment and plan operations happen around these rows, and our snapshot lags DWR’s live feed by design. Advisory reading aid on public data — never an administrative or legal conclusion, and never a substitute for DWR administration or an engineer’s analysis. Our methodology has not yet had outside expert review: how this is built.

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