FARMERS HIGHLINE CANAL ☆ 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

52.4 cfs as of 2026-10-15 00:00 (1.3 h ago)

Provisional 15-minute telemetry from FHLDITCO ↗ (FARMERS HIGHLINE CANAL). 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

FARMERS HIGHLINE CANAL holds 121 decreed rights on CLEAR CREEK. As of 2026-10-01, 93 of them are out of priority under a call at admin 7449.00000 placed by WANNAMAKER DITCH. Its 28 most senior rights, back to 1860-02-25, keep 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 33,218 acre-feet. It was a party to 59 court cases that also touched 72 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 WANNAMAKER DITCH (CLEAR CREEK, priority 1870-05-23).

Which of its rights are out of priority?

Under today's controlling call (WANNAMAKER DITCH, priority 1870-05-23): 93 of this structure's 121 rights are out of priority now. (7 call(s) state no district and sit outside this one — not judged, not assumed.) In the 5 past years most like this one (2020, 2018, 2025, 2019, 2023), 7 of the rights shown below were out at least one week in at least one analog year.

Where it sits in line

Priority 1860-02-25 — 6th most senior of the 1815 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: CROKE CANAL (1860-02-25)☆. Immediately behind: GOLDEN CITY WATER WORKS PIPELINE (1860-02-25)☆.

On MAINSTEM at river mile 48.3, it is 39th of 107 down the reach. Immediately upstream: COORS COOLING WATER RT BELOW INLET☆. Immediately downstream: FARMERS HIGHLINE RT TO CLEAR CR☆.

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 (121)

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 5760.16 cfs decreed rate, the average day over the last 6 year(s) had 1729.246 cfs in priority (30% of the decree). No call in effect is a free river — that was 4.1% of days.

On 1740 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 17 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 →

Checked against DWR's own analysis

DWR publishes a day-by-day out-of-priority analysis for some rights. Where it exists we score this page against it — computed live, so it reflects what the code does right now, not what a memo once said. Agreement on this structure: 99.2% on whether a day was curtailed, and 91.2% of days land on DWR's exact percent of the day.

Legal record & documents

760 decreed actions on record across 81 court cases: 16CW3186, 04CW0350, 22CW3195, 15CW3161, 00CW0264, 00CW0262, 99CW0207, 14CW3117, 96CW1117, 96CW1116 and 71 more below.

2042 imaged documents on DWR’s shelf for this structure — 1993 water-court documents across 133 cases, including 137 decrees. Every row opens the scanned PDF at DWR. Listing as of 2026-09-05.

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 0700569 ↗ (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 →

Water-court filings naming this structure

1 application in the monthly water-court resumes explicitly reference this WDID. The resume is the earliest public notice of a new claim (C.R.S. 37-92-302) — years before anything reaches the decree record below. Most applications name structures by name rather than WDID, so absence here is weak evidence of absence.

Source: Judicial Branch combined monthly resumes (archive), indexed nightly; WDIDs attached only when a 7-digit token in the filing matches DWR’s structure inventory.

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.

DWR’s own out-of-priority analysis

The Division of Water Resources computes its own daily priority analysis for this structure (analysisservices/callanalysisbywdid) — the authoritative answer to “could this right legally divert that day”, from the agency that administers the river. Shown beside, never blended into, the climatology above: different method, different span, and you should know whose number is whose.

DWR’s series is cached for a scoped set of structures (the rights that move the most water, bracketed most-senior and most-junior) — absence of a right here means it isn’t in that set yet, not that it is never curtailed.

Structures it shares court cases with

This structure was a party to 59 court cases that also touched 72 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.

47 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 12 omnibus adjudications (CA60052, 133 structures; 12CW0303, 40 structures; 96CW1117, 36 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 33,218 AF. Its most recent year on record, 2025, came in at 34,563 AF — 104% of that, and 9th 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.

Call-derived yield: senior right divertible 100.0% of a median season / 100.0% dry-year.

Trends for this structure

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

Its reference gage, Coors Ind Ditch: 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.