WILLIAMS & HAMM DITCH ☆ My Water

Who owns it

• Williams and Hamm Ditch Company (nonprofit corporation) — probable match, from the Colorado Secretary of State business record ↗; verify before relying on it. A nonprofit corporation of this name, in good standing, with its principal office in Salida; matched on the name and the location, not confirmed by the company.

DWR’s own records name no owner for a ditch, reservoir or well, so this comes from the source shown and can be out of date.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

In short

WILLIAMS & HAMM DITCH holds 3 decreed rights on ARKANSAS RIVER. As of 2026-09-27, 1 of them are out of priority under a call at admin 12421.00000 placed by SUNNYSIDE PARK DITCH. Its 2 most senior rights, back to 1875-12-31, keep diverting. 15 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 5,110 acre-feet.

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

● Junior rights called out — call at NEW SALIDA DITCH (ARKANSAS RIVER, priority 1912-03-18).

● Junior rights called out — call at SUNNYSIDE PARK DITCH (ARKANSAS RIVER, priority 1884-01-03).

Which of its rights are out of priority?

Under today's controlling call (SUNNYSIDE PARK DITCH, priority 1884-01-03): 1 of this structure's 3 rights are out of priority now. (15 call(s) state no district and sit outside this one — not judged, not assumed.) In the 5 past years most like this one (2021, 2020, 2023, 2012, 2018), 1 of the rights shown below were out at least one week in at least one analog year.

Where it sits in line

Priority 1875-12-31 — 120th most senior of the 1491 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: YOUNG & SMITH DITCH (1875-07-01)☆. Immediately behind: FRANTZ DITCH (1875-12-31)☆.

On MAINSTEM at river mile 68.4, it is 385th of 488 down the reach. Immediately upstream: SALIDA AFTERBAY☆. Immediately downstream: WILLIAMS DITCH☆.

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 (3)

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 20.0 cfs decreed rate, the average day over the last 6 year(s) had 15.298 cfs in priority (76% of the decree). No call in effect is a free river — that was 0.0% of days.

On 1653 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.

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

3 decreed actions on record across 3 court cases: CA5141, CA1127, 19CW0008.

451 imaged documents on DWR’s shelf for this structure — 449 water-court documents across 3 cases, including 5 decrees. Every row opens the scanned PDF at DWR. Listing as of 2026-10-05.

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 1100531 ↗ (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 2 omnibus adjudications (CA5141, 182 structures; CA1127, 143 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 5,110 AF. Its most recent year on record, 2025, came in at 5,705 AF — 112% of that, and 11th 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, Arkansas River near Nathrop: no clear flow trend.

Every gage and reach in this district →

How good is our record of it?

Grade A (9/10 points) — the components below are the finding; the letter alone is not.