UNITED DIVERSION FACILITY NO 3 ☆ My Water

The record and the river

Where this structure is measured

A green link is DWR's own: either its telemetry inventory maps this WDID to that station, or the station is named for this WDID (0700553 → 0700553A). An amber one is ours — the station sits within 250 m and shares a distinctive word with this structure's name, which is a strong hint rather than a DWR statement that this gage meters this structure. Wrong? Tell us.

In short

UNITED DIVERSION FACILITY NO 3 holds 28 decreed rights on SOUTH PLATTE RIVER. A call at SOUTH PLATTE RIVER COMPACT on SOUTH PLATTE RIVER (1897-06-13), and 1 other currently reaches it: junior rights called out. 5 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: only 3 analog year(s) have both flow and a complete administration record; 4 needed. In a median year over its last 15 recorded years it diverts 1,435 acre-feet. It was a party to 20 court cases that also touched 43 other structures.

Assembled from the figures on this page — every number above is checked against them before it is shown (11 checked). The detail, with its method, is in the cards below.

Current administration

● Junior rights called out — call at SOUTH PLATTE RIVER COMPACT (SOUTH PLATTE RIVER, priority 1897-06-13).

● Junior rights called out — call at STERLING IRR CO DITCH 1 (SOUTH PLATTE RIVER, priority 1901-02-16).

Which of its rights are out of priority?

The outlook for the weeks ahead is not computable for this structure: only 3 analog year(s) have both flow and a complete administration record; 4 needed. 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 1885-11-20 — 709th most senior of the 21886 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: UPPER TYLER DITCH (1885-07-15)☆. Immediately behind: GERMAN DITCH (1885-11-30)☆.

On MAINSTEM at river mile 124.7, it is 790th of 890 down the reach. Immediately upstream: DENVER-HUDSON CNL☆. Immediately downstream: THORNTON HAMMER PIT☆.

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 (30)

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.

How much of this decree was in priority, by day

A right is in priority on a day when it is senior to every call administering this structure. Of its 81.44 cfs decreed rate, the average day over the last 6 year(s) had 14.205 cfs in priority (17% of the decree). No call in effect is a free river — that was 14.1% of days.

On 114 days some rights were in priority and others were not — seniority splits a decree rather than switching it off. Calls are set and released at a time of day, not at midnight, so a day is counted by the hour: a call setting at 4pm costs that day a third of its rate, not all of it. A call began or ended mid-day on 40 of these days.

This is paper water. It is the decreed rate that was in priority — not water that was physically in the stream, and not water this structure diverted. A ditch can be in priority for 50 cfs on a day the creek carries five. What that distinction means →

Legal record & documents

228 decreed actions on record across 23 court cases: 19CW3148, 19CW3062, 18CW3195, 16CW3196, 16CW3195, 16CW3059, 14CW3164, 13CW3062, 11CW0285, 09CW0283 and 13 more below.

2759 imaged documents on DWR’s shelf for this structure — 2757 water-court documents across 29 cases, including 30 decrees. Every row opens the scanned PDF at DWR. Listing as of 2026-08-31.

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 0201511 ↗ (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 →

How often is it out of priority?

Across the 11 seasons whose call record is complete enough to judge this structure (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026), week by week from April.

Structures it shares court cases with

This structure was a party to 20 court cases that also touched 43 other structures — changes of water right, augmentation plans, exchanges. Being parties to the same case does not by itself mean water moved between them; which way it ran, and how much, is in the decree.

8 further shared cases not shown — the most specific are listed first, since a case binding two structures says more than one binding a dozen.

Also a party to 3 omnibus adjudications (16CW3195, 26 structures; 16CW3196, 26 structures; 03CW0320, 16 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 1,435 AF. Its most recent year on record, 2025, came in at 532 AF — 37% of that, and 4th lowest of the 15 years with a recorded volume.

Trends for this structure

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

Its reference gage, United #3 Pump Inlet 1: no clear flow trend.

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.

Recent watch events

• 2026-09-05 — legal document update (case 16CW3196)