Hydrohistorian
Lesson A1 · The Line · prior appropriation
A right is a place in a queue
Not a quantity of water. Where one real structure stands in its district's line, and what that has meant week by week.
The founding move of Colorado water law, and the one to unlearn first: owning a water right is not owning water. It is owning a position in a line — first in time, first in rightColorado's rule for sharing water: first in time, first in right. Age decides, not proximity or need. — and in a dry year the back of the line gets nothing while the front gets every drop it is decreed. A right can be perfectly valid and perfectly dry in the same afternoon.
The queue, not the deed
When there is not enough water, nobody takes a percentage cut. The most senior right is satisfied in full, then the next, then the next, until the river runs out — and everyone junior to that point is out of priority (called outNot entitled to divert right now, because a senior right is calling for the water.). A right one day older is ahead of you forever. That all-or-nothing, strictly-ordered structure is why the admin number exists, why seniority prices water (lesson A3), and why the question that matters about any right is not “how much?” but “where in line?”
See it on a real structure
Pick any structure and see where it stands in its district's line.
Or start with a worked example: Farmers Highline Canal, Agricultural Ditch.
What this does not let you conclude
The queue shown ranks structures in this district’s cache by most-senior right — a reading aid, not DWR’s tabulation; and position in line is not wetness: conditional rights, plans, exchanges and the reach a call actually administers (lesson A4) all bend the simple story. 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.
Check your understanding
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