MEADOW DITCH ☆ My Water

The record and the river

In short

MEADOW DITCH holds 1 decreed right on INDIAN CREEK. A call at SOUTH PLATTE RIVER AT WATERTON on SOUTH PLATTE RIVER (1863-12-30), 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: this structure is not on the modelled flow network, so no reference gage can honestly stand in for it. In a median year over its last 15 recorded years it diverts 163 acre-feet. That use is falling by about 13.9 acre-feet a year over 15 years (p=0.029448104214274018). It was a party to 3 court cases that also touched 6 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

● Fully called out — call at SOUTH PLATTE RIVER AT WATERTON (SOUTH PLATTE RIVER, priority 1863-12-30).

● Fully called out — call at CHATFIELD RESERVOIR (SOUTH PLATTE RIVER, priority 1865-12-30).

Which of its rights are out of priority?

The outlook for the weeks ahead is not computable for this structure: this structure is not on the modelled flow network, so no reference gage can honestly stand in for it. 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 1866-05-31 — 141st most senior of the 21886 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: WESTERN MUTUAL DITCH (1866-05-05)☆. Immediately behind: NELSON RANCH HEADGATE (1866-05-31)☆.

Decreed rights (1)

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 4.44 cfs decreed rate, the average day over the last 6 year(s) had 4.417 cfs in priority (99% of the decree). No call in effect is a free river — that was 6.4% of days.

On 8 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 32 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

9 decreed actions on record across 4 court cases: 12/10/1883, 06CW0294, 05CW0030, 00CW0231.

131 imaged documents on DWR’s shelf for this structure — 128 water-court documents across 4 cases, including 4 decrees. Every row opens the scanned PDF at DWR. Listing as of 2026-09-06.

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 0801278 ↗ (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.

Structures it shares court cases with

This structure was a party to 3 court cases that also touched 6 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.

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 163 AF. Its most recent year on record, 2020, came in at 49 AF — 30% of that, and 3rd lowest of the 15 years with a recorded volume.

Trends for this structure

Recorded use is falling over its last 15 recorded years (-14 AF/yr, Mann-Kendall p=0.029).

Every gage and reach in this district →

How good is our record of it?

Grade B (7/10 points) — the components below are the finding; the letter alone is not.