RIO GRANDE CNL ☆ My Water

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.

Flowing now

924.0 cfs as of 2026-10-15 08:45 (2.3 h ago)

Provisional 15-minute telemetry from RIOCANCO ↗ (RIO GRANDE CANAL NEAR DEL NORTE). Raw, not the approved record — it is never merged into the diversion history below. DWR publishes the official diversion record after the water year closes and is approved, which is why that record ends months back while this reads minutes ago.

In short

RIO GRANDE CNL holds 23 decreed rights on RIO GRANDE. As of 2026-09-27, 21 of them are out of priority under a call at admin 11568.00000 placed by CHICAGO D. Its 2 most senior rights, back to 1879-11-30, keep diverting. 7 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 123,629 acre-feet. It was a party to 2 court cases that also touched 13 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

● Junior rights called out — call at RIO GRANDE COMPACT - LOBATOS (RIO GRANDE, priority 1902-06-29).

● Junior rights called out — call at CHICAGO D (RIO GRANDE, priority 1881-09-01).

Which of its rights are out of priority?

Under today's controlling call (CHICAGO D, priority 1881-09-01): 21 of this structure's 23 rights are out of priority now. (7 call(s) state no district and sit outside this one — not judged, not assumed.) In the 5 past years most like this one (1993, 1990, 1994, 2024, 1991), 6 of the rights shown below were out at least one week in at least one analog year.

Where it sits in line

Priority 1879-11-30 — 172nd most senior of the 8023 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: HERMANTHAL D (1879-08-31)☆. Immediately behind: SCHUCH SCHMIDT D (1879-12-30)☆.

On MAINSTEM at river mile 89.3, it is 221st of 380 down the reach. Immediately upstream: SCOTCH D☆. Immediately downstream: SCHUCH SCHMIDT D☆.

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 (23)

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 1648.5 cfs decreed rate, the average day over the last 6 year(s) had 831.187 cfs in priority (50% of the decree). No call in effect is a free river — that was 0.2% of days.

On 906 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 3 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

70 decreed actions on record across 4 court cases: 79CW0091, W3979, 04/09/1903, 05/01/1896.

63 imaged documents on DWR’s shelf for this structure — 62 water-court documents across 9 cases, including 8 decrees. Every row opens the scanned PDF at DWR. Listing as of 2026-10-14.

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 2000812 ↗ (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

This structure was a party to 2 court cases that also touched 13 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 123,629 AF. Its most recent year on record, 2025, came in at 114,182 AF — 92% of that, and 6th lowest of the 15 years with a recorded volume.

Call-derived yield: senior right divertible 50.0% 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, Rio Grande Canal near Del Norte: no clear flow trend.

Every gage and reach in this district →

How good is our record of it?

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