EXCELSIOR DITCH ☆ My Water

The record and the river

Current administration

● Junior rights called out — call at ARKANSAS RIVER COMPACT(COLORADO-KANSAS STATE LINE) (ARKANSAS RIVER, priority 1949-05-30).

● Fully called out — call at FORT LYON CANAL (ARKANSAS RIVER, priority 1884-04-14).

● Fully called out — call at LAS ANIMAS CONSOLIDATED (ARKANSAS RIVER, priority 1884-12-03).

Which of its rights are out of priority?

The outlook for the weeks ahead is not computable for this structure: only 3 analog year(s) have both flow and a complete administration record; 4 needed. 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 1887-05-01 — 23rd most senior of the 1361 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: COLLIER DITCH (1887-03-10)☆. Immediately behind: STONEWALL SPRINGS SOUTH RESERVOIR (1887-05-01)☆.

On MAINSTEM at river mile 40.7, it is 427th of 927 down the reach. Immediately upstream: HOPKINS POND☆. Immediately downstream: 1413362☆.

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 120.0 cfs decreed rate, the average day over the last 6 year(s) had 46.09 cfs in priority (38% of the decree). No call in effect is a free river — that was 0.0% of days.

On 52 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

26 decreed actions on record across 9 court cases: 16CW3103, 06CW0120, 99CW0169A, CA9532, CA9531, CA9530, CA2535, 16CW3094, 04CW0062.

837 imaged documents on DWR’s shelf for this structure — 781 water-court documents across 12 cases, including 12 decrees. Every row opens the scanned PDF at DWR. Listing as of 2026-10-09.

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 1400539 ↗ (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

1 water-court application in the monthly resumes names a structure on ARKANSAS RIVER 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.

Structures it shares court cases with

This structure was a party to 4 court cases that also touched 8 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 2 omnibus adjudications (CA2535, 34 structures; 16CW3103, 19 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 2,212 AF. Its most recent year on record, 2025, came in at 2,212 AF — 100% of that, and 8th lowest of the 15 years with a recorded volume.

Call-derived yield: senior right divertible 0.0% of a median season / 0.0% 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, Stonewall Springs South Reservoir Outflow: 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.