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· every download of this record carries its certificate idBELLAIRES LAKE RES
Structure dossier · WDID 0303687 · RESERVOIR · ELKHORN CREEK · DWR record
Bellaires Lake Res is a reservoir on Elkhorn Creek in Colorado. This page is its public record: the water it has a right to, whether it may take it today, and its history, compiled from the Colorado Division of Water Resources.
Source DWR administrative record · verify at DWR structure ↗ Source DWR administrative record · verify at DWR diversion records ↗ Source Our computation, scored against a reference · scored against DWR's call analysis, see /methods
Where this page's figures come from
Generated 2026-10-15 23:00 by Hydrohistorian. Sources: DWR HydroBase snapshot HydroBase_CO_20260928 (history) + CDSS REST (current), USGS NWIS cross-checks. Engine v0.5.0 (dd58e60) — every figure regenerates from this named code version and data image.
The record and the river
In short
BELLAIRES LAKE RES holds 1 decreed right on ELKHORN CREEK. No active call senior to its rights reaches its district today (18 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 13 recorded years it diverts 36 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.
Download this structure
Everything on this page as data you can work with — and a README that makes it citable: the HydroBase snapshot it was built from, the build commit, what every column means, the method behind each derived figure, and that method's stated limits.
⇩ Full record (.zip) Print / save as PDF
Or one table at a time: rights.csv · annual_use.csv · curtailment_now.csv · court_cases.csv · co_parties.csv · call_climatology.csv
What is in the bundle
rights.csv— every decreed right, most senior first, with admin numbers, dates, amounts, uses and case numbers.annual_use.csv— recorded diversion by year, with releases accounted separately.curtailment_now.csv— each right's current priority status and how often it was out across analog years.court_cases.csv— the cases attached to its rights.co_parties.csv— the other structures that were parties to those cases. Not available anywhere else.call_climatology.csv— how often each right has been out of priority by week of season, with confidence intervals and the seasons the record could actually judge.README.txt— provenance, methods, limits, disclaimer, and links back to DWR's own records for verification.
Where it sits
Location as DWR records it (storage). Faint dots are the neighbouring water; click any to open it.
Current administration
● In priority — no active call senior to this structure's rights affects its district (18 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 1904-07-29 — 249th most senior of the 2964 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: SEELEY LAKE RES (1902-06-12). Immediately behind: MOUNTAIN SUPPLY RES 20 (1904-09-20).
On ELKHORN CREEK at river mile 66.4, it is 2nd of 14 down the reach. Immediately upstream: BELLAIRES LAKE RES FDR D. Immediately downstream: FALLS DITCH.
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 (1)
| Admin noDWR's numeric encoding of a water right's seniority. Smaller is more senior; the integer part counts days from 1849-12-31 to the date that ranks the right. | AppropriatedWhen water was first put to beneficial use. It sets seniority unless a prior adjudication date is later. | AdjudicatedWhen the water court confirmed the right. A use decreed in 1975 was not a decreed use in 1955, however old the appropriation is. | AbsoluteA right actually put to use, as opposed to conditional -- a placeholder for a use not yet made. | ConditionalA right reserving a place in line for a use not yet made; it must be diligently pursued or it lapses. | Alt-pointAn absolute amount decreed at another structure that may be diverted here instead -- an alternate point of diversion or an exchange. DWR calls this the APEX amount; a right showing 0.0 absolute but an alt-point amount is exercised here under another structure's decree. | Decreed forWhat the court said this water may be used for -- irrigation, municipal supply, augmentation and so on. | Case |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20066.19933 | 1904-07-29 | 1922-04-22 | 69.0 AF | 0.0 | — | Irrigation, Fishery | CA2031 |
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
1 decreed actions on record across
1 court case:
CA2031.
Every case, dated
| Case | Actions | Latest adjudication | Types |
|---|---|---|---|
CA2031 | 1 | 1922-04-22 | S |
5 imaged documents on DWR’s shelf for this structure — 5 water-court documents across 2 cases, including 2 decrees. Every row opens the scanned PDF at DWR. Listing as of 2026-09-27.
- Decree in case CA2031 ↗ · imaged 2006-09-01 · 324 pages
- Decree in case W9460 ↗ · imaged 2005-08-24 · 10 pages
“Imaged” is the date DWR’s archive filed the scan, which is often years after the court acted (a 1911 decree can be imaged in 2011). The court’s own date is the adjudication date in the rights table.
Court record (5)
| Imaged | Case | Type | Pages | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006-09-01 | CA2031 |
DECREE | 324 | open ↗ |
| 2005-08-24 | W9460 |
APPLICATION | 22 | open ↗ |
| 2005-08-24 | W9460 |
DECREE | 10 | open ↗ |
| 2005-08-24 | W9460 |
OTHER | 3 | open ↗ |
| 2005-08-24 | W9460 |
STIPULATION/SETTLEMENT | 13 | open ↗ |
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 0303687 ↗ (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 1 omnibus
adjudication
(CA2031, 143 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.
How this is derived
Every court action DWR records for a structure
carries its case number. Where one case number appears in the records of
several structures, those structures were parties to the same proceeding.
This is read straight from the cached transaction tables — no
document was interpreted to build it. Case numbers are validated against
the known Colorado formats first: the case column also contains stray
dates (10/04/1884 appears on 98 Clear Creek rows), and
treating one as a case number would invent a shared proceeding between
60 unrelated structures. Cases spanning more than
12 structures are separated out as omnibus
adjudications. The filing year comes from the case number, not from the
row's adjudication date — that date belongs to the water right the
action describes, so a 2006 case legitimately carries a 1989 date.
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 36 AF. Its most recent year on record, 2022, came in at 2,885 AF — 8014% of that, and 13th lowest of the 13 years with a recorded volume.
This structure records both diversions and reservoir releases — they are separate water movements and are accounted separately below.
| Year | Diverted (AFA volume: one acre covered a foot deep, about 326,000 gallons -- roughly a suburban household's outdoor use for a year.) | Compared with its own record | Released (AF) | Days recorded | Peak (cfs) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | 27 | 3rd lowest of 13 · 75% of median | 26 | 32 | 0.4 |
| 2000 | 45 | 9th lowest of 13 · 125% of median | 31 | 153 | 1.3 |
| 2001 | 36 | 7th lowest of 13 · 100% of median | — | 62 | 0.5 |
| 2002 | — | no recorded volume | 24 | 0 | — |
| 2003 | 58 | 10th lowest of 13 · 161% of median | 34 | 23 | 2.0 |
| 2004 | 28 | 4th lowest of 13 · 78% of median | 14 | 123 | 0.3 |
| 2005 | 30 | 5th lowest of 13 · 83% of median | 40 | 7 | 2.7 |
| 2006 | — | no recorded volume | 26 | 0 | — |
| 2007 | 33 | 6th lowest of 13 · 92% of median | 17 | 62 | 0.5 |
| 2008 | 9 | 1st lowest of 13 · 25% of median | 15 | 8 | 0.7 |
| 2009 | 39 | 8th lowest of 13 · 108% of median | 21 | 42 | 1.7 |
| 2010 | 21 | 2nd lowest of 13 · 58% of median | 23 | 62 | 0.2 |
| 2011 | 63 | 11th lowest of 13 · 175% of median | — | 198 | 0.4 |
| 2021 | 424 | 12th lowest of 13 · 1178% of median | — | 61 | 6.1 |
| 2022 | 2,885 | 13th lowest of 13 · 8014% of median | — | 151 | 50.8 |
Trends for this structure
Recorded use shows no clear trend over its last 13 recorded years — which is itself worth knowing.
Its reference gage, La Poudre Pass Creek below Long Draw Reservoir: no clear flow trend.
How good is our record of it?
Grade B (7/10 points) — the components below are the finding; the letter alone is not.
The rubric, component by component
| Check | State | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| identity | complete | name, type, and water source all on file |
| decreed rights | on file | 1 right(s), seniority decoded |
| diversion record | stale | 1609 measured days, but newest is 1580 day(s) before the data's end (target 450) |
| record continuity | sparse | 16% of the irrigation seasons in 1976-2022 carry measured days |
| published-record stability | stable | no upstream revisions recorded against this structure |
Advisory reading aid on public data — not an administrative or legal conclusion, not a title opinion, and not a substitute for DWR administration or an engineer's analysis. Methodology review status is disclosed at hydrohistorian's basin pages.
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