HOWELL DITCH ☆ 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.

Flowing now

0.01 cfs as of 2026-10-12 17:15 (3.8 h ago)

Provisional 15-minute telemetry from HONDITCO ↗ (HOWELL DITCH NORTH FLUME). 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

HOWELL DITCH holds 2 decreed rights on BOULDER CREEK. As of 2026-09-27, 1 of them are out of priority under a call at admin 4513.00000 placed by RURAL DITCH. Its 1 most senior right, back to 1859-12-01, keeps diverting. 7 further calls state no district and sit outside this one, so they are counted here rather than assumed either way. In a median year over its last 15 recorded years it diverts 390 acre-feet. It was a party to 2 court cases that also touched 5 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 RURAL DITCH (BOULDER CREEK, priority 1862-05-09).

Which of its rights are out of priority?

Under today's controlling call (RURAL DITCH, priority 1862-05-09): 1 of this structure's 2 rights are out of priority now. (7 call(s) state no district and sit outside this one — not judged, not assumed.) In the 4 past years most like this one (2025, 2024, 2023, 2022), 1 of the rights shown below were out at least one week in at least one analog year.

Where it sits in line

Priority 1859-12-01 — 26th most senior of the 1867 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: 0602125 (1859-11-15)☆. Immediately behind: HOWARD DITCH (1860-04-01)☆.

On MAINSTEM at river mile 23.4, it is 45th of 78 down the reach. Immediately upstream: PANAMA RES 1☆. Immediately downstream: WITTEMYER POND NO 4☆.

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.

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 5.0 cfs decreed rate, the average day over the last 6 year(s) had 5.0 cfs in priority (100% of the decree). No call in effect is a free river — that was 14.2% of days.

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 38 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

8 decreed actions on record across 5 court cases: 16CW3160, 97CW0151, 79CW0363, CA1302, CA10324.

120 imaged documents on DWR’s shelf for this structure — 119 water-court documents across 6 cases, including 6 decrees. Every row opens the scanned PDF at DWR. Listing as of 2026-09-03.

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 0600536 ↗ (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 →

Filings that would move water above this headgate

4 water-court applications in the monthly resumes name a structure on BOULDER CREEK upstream of this headgate. A new right, exchange or change of use up there changes what arrives down here — the resume is the public notice, and the opposition window is how anyone affected answers it.

Judged on this structure’s own named stream only — a filing on a tributary that joins upstream is not judged here. Filings that name structures only in prose, without a WDID, are invisible to this card. Reading aid, not legal advice; the deadline is computed from C.R.S. 37-92-302(3), and the court’s own notice controls.

How often is it out of priority?

Across the 12 seasons whose call record is complete enough to judge this structure (2015, 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 2 court cases that also touched 5 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.

Also a party to 1 omnibus adjudication (16CW3160, 18 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 390 AF. Its most recent year on record, 2025, came in at 360 AF — 92% of that, and 6th 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, Howell Ditch North Flume: no clear flow trend.

Every gage and reach in this district →

How good is our record of it?

Grade B (8/10 points) — the components below are the finding; the letter alone is not.