TERRACE RESERVOIR ☆ My Water

Who owns it

• Terrace Irrigation Company (private) — as reported to the National Inventory of Dams (USACE) ↗.

DWR’s own records name no owner for a ditch, reservoir or well, so this comes from the source shown and can be out of date.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

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

TERRACE RESERVOIR holds 3 decreed rights on ALAMOSA RIVER. As of 2026-10-18, 1 of them are out of priority under a call at admin 7790.00000 placed by GARCIA D 2. Its 2 most senior rights, back to 1870-04-10, keep diverting. 8 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 14 recorded years it diverts 6,138 acre-feet. It was a party to 4 court cases that also touched 4 other structures.

Assembled from the figures on this page — every number above is checked against them before it is shown (12 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. Joined on this structure’s own WDID as DWR records it on the dam. Hazard class describes the consequence of failure, not the likelihood of it. DWR’s dam record.

Current administration

● Junior rights called out — call at GARCIA D 2 (ALAMOSA RIVER, priority 1871-04-29).

Which of its rights are out of priority?

Under today's controlling call (GARCIA D 2, priority 1871-04-29): 1 of this structure's 3 rights are out of priority now. (8 call(s) state no district and sit outside this one — not judged, not assumed.) In the 5 past years most like this one (2025, 2017, 2022, 2019, 2016), 3 of the rights shown below were out at least one week in at least one analog year.

Where it sits in line

Priority 1870-04-10 — 15th most senior of the 1041 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: VALDEZ D BYPASS (1870-04-10)☆. Immediately behind: CAPULIN D (1870-04-12)☆.

On ALAMOSA RIVER at river mile 30.3, it is 32nd of 118 down the reach. Immediately upstream: VALLES SPRING NO 14☆. Immediately downstream: J H VALDEZ 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 (4)

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 3.45 cfs decreed rate, the average day over the last 6 year(s) had 2.73 cfs in priority (79% of the decree). No call in effect is a free river — that was 0.2% of days.

On 20 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

8 decreed actions on record across 6 court cases: 02/07/1918, 82CW0097, 16CW3019, 14CW3027, 13CW3014, 13CW3013.

48 imaged documents on DWR’s shelf for this structure — 42 water-court documents across 6 cases, including 6 decrees. Every row opens the scanned PDF at DWR. Listing as of 2026-10-21.

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 2103583 ↗ (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 4 court cases that also touched 4 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 14 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 6,138 AF. Its most recent year on record, 2025, came in at 6,033 AF — 98% of that, and 7th lowest of the 14 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 14 recorded years — which is itself worth knowing.

Its reference gage, Alamosa River below Terrace Reservoir: annual flow declining at -2.61 cfs per decade (-2.5% of its median annual flow), with a detected shift around 1987.

Every gage and reach in this district →

How good is our record of it?

Grade B (8/10 points) — the components below are the finding; the letter alone is not.