HORSETOOTH RESERVOIR ☆ My Water

Who owns it

• Bureau of Reclamation (federal) — 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DWR’s own records name no owner for a ditch, reservoir or well, so this comes from the source shown and can be out of date.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.

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.

Flowing now

64.9 cfs as of 2026-10-13 20:15 (4.1 h ago)

Provisional 15-minute telemetry from HOROUTCO ↗ (HORSETOOTH RESERVOIR (OUTFLOW)). Raw, not the approved record — it is never merged into the diversion history below. DWR publishes the official diversion record after the water year closes and is approved, which is why that record ends months back while this reads minutes ago.

In short

HORSETOOTH RESERVOIR holds 2 decreed rights on DIXON CREEK. 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 5 recorded years it diverts 105,731 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 1933-09-14 — 519th 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: MACE WELL 1 (1933-08-31)☆. Immediately behind: VANNORSDEL SPRING WELL 4 (1933-11-30)☆.

On DIXON CREEK at river mile 162.0, it is 2nd of 5 down the reach. Immediately upstream: DIXON FDR CANAL☆. Immediately downstream: COLLEGE LAKE FDR D☆.

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 (2)

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

51 decreed actions on record across 10 court cases: W9322, 15CW3053, CA11217, 96CW1122, 18CW3076, 17CW3057, W0108, CA10077, 88CW0051, 05CW0181.

286 imaged documents on DWR’s shelf for this structure — 246 water-court documents across 29 cases, including 29 decrees. Every row opens the scanned PDF at DWR. Listing as of 2026-09-27.

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 0303732 ↗ (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 5 omnibus adjudications (CA11217, 370 structures; 17CW3057, 38 structures; 18CW3076, 38 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 105,731 AF. Its most recent year on record, 2015, came in at 52,037 AF — 49% of that, and 1st lowest of the 5 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

Its reference gage, Cache La Poudre near Greeley: annual flow rising at +8.06 cfs per decade (+7.3% of its median annual flow), with a detected shift around 1969.

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.