DURAN DITCH ☆ My Water

The record and the river

In short

DURAN DITCH holds 6 decreed rights on CUCHARAS RIVER. A call at DURAN DITCH on CUCHARAS RIVER (1871-06-12) currently reaches it: junior rights called out. 16 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 914 acre-feet. It was a party to 1 court cases that also touched 2 other structures.

Assembled from the figures on this page — every number above is checked against them before it is shown (7 checked). The detail, with its method, is in the cards below.

Current administration

● Junior rights called out — call at DURAN DITCH (CUCHARAS RIVER, priority 1871-06-12).

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 1871-06-13 — 71st most senior of the 1045 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: DENTON DITCH (1871-06-01)☆. Immediately behind: DAVID HART DITCH (1871-06-15)☆.

On MAINSTEM at river mile 45.1, it is 491st of 509 down the reach. Immediately upstream: ROGERS SPRING NO 3☆. Immediately downstream: D&RGW STATION NO 2☆.

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 (6)

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 6.5 cfs decreed rate, the average day over the last 6 year(s) had 0.991 cfs in priority (15% of the decree). No call in effect is a free river — that was 0.0% of days.

On 665 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

7 decreed actions on record across 5 court cases: 17CW3075, 11/27/1928, 02/23/1898, CA0582, 06/12/1889.

54 imaged documents on DWR’s shelf for this structure — 54 water-court documents across 5 cases, including 5 decrees. Every row opens the scanned PDF at DWR. Listing as of 2026-10-11.

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 1600626 ↗ (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 1 season whose call record is complete enough to judge this structure (2004), week by week from April. Read these as counts, not rates — 1 seasons is a short record.

Structures it shares court cases with

This structure was a party to 1 court case that also touched 2 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 1 omnibus adjudication (17CW3075, 20 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 914 AF. Its most recent year on record, 2025, came in at 167 AF — 18% of that, and 2nd 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, Mexican Ditch: 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.