LONG LAKE 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.

In short

LONG LAKE DITCH holds 2 decreed rights on RALSTON CREEK. A call at WANNAMAKER DITCH on CLEAR CREEK (1870-05-23), and 1 other currently reaches it: fully called out. 7 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 gage record for this year at this date, so there is nothing to find analogs for. In a median year over its last 15 recorded years it diverts 655 acre-feet. That use is falling by about 18.1 acre-feet a year over 15 years (p=0.04776124267510373).

Assembled from the figures on this page — every number above is checked against them before it is shown (9 checked). The detail, with its method, is in the cards below.

Current administration

● Fully called out — call at WANNAMAKER DITCH (CLEAR CREEK, priority 1870-05-23).

● Fully called out — call at BLUNN RES (RALSTON CREEK, priority 1861-06-05).

Which of its rights are out of priority?

The outlook for the weeks ahead is not computable for this structure: no gage record for this year at this date, so there is nothing to find analogs for. 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 1873-05-29 — 83rd 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: CLEAR LAKE RES (1873-05-10)☆. Immediately behind: LONG LAKE RES UPPER (1873-05-29)☆.

On RALSTON CREEK at river mile 43.6, it is 3rd of 24 down the reach. Immediately upstream: SEA OF STORMS RES☆. Immediately downstream: RALSTON RES☆.

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 47.54 cfs decreed rate, the average day over the last 6 year(s) had 4.743 cfs in priority (10% of the decree). No call in effect is a free river — that was 0.0% of days.

On 65 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 2 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: 99.6% on whether a day was curtailed, and 96.0% of days land on DWR's exact percent of the day.

Legal record & documents

3 decreed actions on record across 2 court cases: CA60052, 10/04/1884.

19 imaged documents on DWR’s shelf for this structure — 19 water-court documents across 4 cases, including 5 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 0700711 ↗ (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.

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

Also a party to 1 omnibus adjudication (CA60052, 133 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 655 AF. Its most recent year on record, 2025, came in at 281 AF — 43% of that, and 4th lowest of the 15 years with a recorded volume.

Trends for this structure

Recorded use is falling over its last 15 recorded years (-18 AF/yr, Mann-Kendall p=0.048).

Its reference gage, Ralston-Clear Creek Canal: 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.