EMPIRE RES ☆ My Water

Who owns it

• Bijou Irrigation CO. (private) — as reported to the National Inventory of Dams (USACE) ↗.

DWR’s own records name no owner for a ditch, reservoir or well, so this comes from the source shown and can be out of date. Organisations only: a private landowner’s name is never listed.

In short

EMPIRE RES holds 3 decreed rights on SOUTH PLATTE RIVER. No active call senior to its rights reaches its district today (20 active calls checked), so it is in priority now. 4 further calls state no district and sit outside this one, so they are counted here rather than assumed either way. That is today's position; the weeks ahead cannot be projected for it: no administrative call record for this basin. In a median year over its last 15 recorded years it diverts 56,353 acre-feet.

Assembled from the figures on this page — every number above is checked against them before it is shown (5 checked). The detail, with its method, is in the cards below.

Dam safety

Source: DWR Dam Safety’s jurisdictional-dam inventory (damsafety/damsafetydaminfojd), refreshed weekly. Joined on this structure’s own WDID as DWR records it on the dam. Hazard class describes the consequence of failure, not the likelihood of it. DWR’s dam record.

Current administration

● In priority — no active call senior to this structure's rights affects its district (20 active call(s) checked).

4 further calls state no district and sit outside this one, so they are counted here rather than assumed either way.

Which of its rights are out of priority?

The outlook for the weeks ahead is not computable for this structure: no administrative call record for this basin. Today’s position is a separate question, and it is answered in Current administration above — that screen reads the district’s active calls and needs no reference gage.

Where it sits in line

Priority 1905-05-18 — 415th most senior of the 7708 structures with decreed rights in this water districtDWR's administrative subdivision of a river basin; the unit calls are usually stated in..

Under prior appropriationColorado's rule for sharing water: first in time, first in right. Age decides, not proximity or need., everything ahead of it in this line is satisfied in full before it receives any water. Immediately ahead: EMPIRE DITCH (1905-05-18)☆. Immediately behind: DANIELSON E STOCK 122653 (1905-07-01)☆.

On MAINSTEM at river mile 120.2, it is 215th of 384 down the reach. Immediately upstream: SUBLETTE REFUGE POND☆. Immediately downstream: BIJOU OWW NO 2 RT☆.

Position on the modelled network, not a claim about whose water this is — a stream carries water from many rights at once, and diverted water returns to it.

Decreed rights (3)

Amounts marked cfs are flow rates; AF are stored volumes (storage rights are decreed in acre-feet). An absolute amount of 0.0 beside an alt-point amount is not a dead right: the water is decreed at another structure, and that row records permission to divert it here instead (an alternate point or exchange). A case listing several numbers reflects the original decree plus later change cases.

Legal record & documents

3 decreed actions on record across 3 court cases: CA16704, CA8492, CA2142.

12 imaged documents on DWR’s shelf for this structure — 3 water-court documents across 3 cases, including 3 decrees. Every row opens the scanned PDF at DWR. Listing as of 2026-09-20.

Imaged documents at DWR. DWR keeps the scanned documents for this structure — decrees, rulings, plats, correspondence — in its Laserfiche archive. Open the list directly: imaged documents for 0103816 ↗ (indexed by structure, not by case — the cases listed above appear within the list).

Other DWR records for this structure: DWR’s page for this structure ↗ — net amounts, water rights, transactions & adjudication history, and diversion records, all on that one page. On this site: the district’s full legal picture →

Structures it shares court cases with

Also a party to 3 omnibus adjudications (CA2142, 255 structures; CA16704, 121 structures; CA8492, 39 structures). Those settled many rights at once and are listed separately: they say these structures were adjudicated together, not that they deal with each other.

Recorded use (last 15 years on record)

Years far under the decreed amount? That gap has a name — paper water vs. wet water, explained on this structure.

In a median year this structure has a recorded diversion of 56,353 AF. Its most recent year on record, 2025, came in at 36,318 AF — 64% of that, and 1st lowest of the 15 years with a recorded volume.

This structure records both diversions and reservoir releases — they are separate water movements and are accounted separately below.

Trends for this structure

Recorded use shows no clear trend over its last 15 recorded years — which is itself worth knowing.

Its reference gage, Empire Inlet at Reservoir: annual flow declining at -11.22 cfs per decade (-14.2% of its median annual flow).

Every gage and reach in this district →

How good is our record of it?

Grade A (10/10 points) — the components below are the finding; the letter alone is not.