RIO GRANDE RES ☆ 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.

In short

RIO GRANDE RES holds 21 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. 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 15,574 acre-feet. It was a party to 7 court cases that also touched 8 other structures.

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.

Dam safety

Source: DWR Dam Safety’s jurisdictional-dam inventory (damsafety/damsafetydaminfojd), refreshed weekly. DWR’s record for this dam carries no WDID and no matched NID id, so it is joined by name and position: “RIO GRANDE” 0.027 mi away. More than half of Colorado’s jurisdictional dams can be reached no other way; judge the match before relying on it. Hazard class describes the consequence of failure, not the likelihood of it. DWR’s dam record.

Current administration

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

● Fully 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 21 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 (2007, 2016, 2014, 1999, 1986), 6 of the rights shown below were out at least one week in at least one analog year.

Where it sits in line

Priority 1889-10-30 — 306th 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: CONTINENTAL RES (1889-10-30)☆. Immediately behind: SANTA MARIA RES (1889-10-30)☆.

On MAINSTEM at river mile 15.4, it is 4th of 380 down the reach. Immediately upstream: LOST TRAIL SPRG NO 02☆. Immediately downstream: SAW MILL SPRING☆.

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 (27)

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 3.72 cfs decreed rate, the average day over the last 6 year(s) had 0.01 cfs in priority (0% of the decree). No call in effect is a free river — that was 0.2% of days.

On 3 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

47 decreed actions on record across 11 court cases: 19CW3000, 03CW0041, 90CW0042, 22CW3040, 20CW3011, 10/15/1934, 09/13/1916, W3980, W3979, 22CW3011 and 1 more below.

117 imaged documents on DWR’s shelf for this structure — 115 water-court documents across 20 cases, including 17 decrees. Every row opens the scanned PDF at DWR. Listing as of 2026-10-15.

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 2003554 ↗ (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 7 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.

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 15,574 AF. Its most recent year on record, 2025, came in at 16,339 AF — 105% of that, and 9th lowest of the 15 years with a recorded volume.

This structure records both diversions and reservoir releases — they are separate water movements and are accounted separately below.

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 at Thirty Mile Bridge near Creede: annual flow declining at -5.13 cfs per decade (-2.6% of its median annual flow), with a detected shift around 1949.

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.