MONTGOMERY RES ☆ My Water

Who owns it

• Colorado Springs Utilities (Continental-Hoosier project) — from Hydrohistorian's hand-curated transbasin register.
• Colorado Springs Utilities (local government) — 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DWR’s own records name no owner for a ditch, reservoir or well, so this comes from the source shown and can be out of date.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.

This is water crossing the divide

Montgomery Res is the receiving end of the Hoosier Pass Tunnel (tunnel). It takes water from Blue River headwaters (Div 5) and delivers it to Montgomery Reservoir, Middle Fork South Platte (Div 1). Water arriving here is an import: it was never in this basin’s own runoff.

The other end: Con-Hoosier Lower Blue Lake 3603557, Con-Hoosier Mayflower Lake 3603558, Con-Hoosier Spruce Lake 3603567, Con-Hoosier Upper Blue Lake 3603570, Con-Hoosier Sys Blue River Ditch 3604683, Con-Hoosier Sys Crystal Ditch 3604687, Con-Hoosier Sys Ditch Intercepted Flows 3604688, Con-Hoosier Sys Mccullough Ditch 3604690, Con-Hoosier - East Hoosier Ditch Claim 1 3604692, Con-Hoosier - Ditch Claim 2 3604696, Con-Hoosier Sys Spruce Ditch 3604697, Con-Hoosier Sys East Hoosier Ditch 3604698, Con-Hoosier Tunnel 3604699

Metered as a facility: HSPTUNCO, HSPCOMCO, BEMHODCO, MONTDOCO, MCCDIVCO — the record for the crossing itself, which may run longer than the record for either structure.

Owner / operator: Colorado Springs Utilities (Continental-Hoosier project)

From the site’s hand-curated register of transbasin facilities. Every crossing on one page →

In short

MONTGOMERY RES holds 3 decreed rights on MIDDLE FORK SOUTH PLATTE. No call currently reaches it that we can lawfully attribute, so none of its rights are being curtailed by one. 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 15 recorded years it diverts 11,060 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 (6 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

● In priority — no active call senior to this structure's rights affects its district (18 active call(s) checked).

8 further calls state no district and sit outside this one, so they are counted here rather than assumed either way.

Which of its rights are out of priority?

No active call verifiably reaches this structure (18 active call(s) checked), so none of its 3 rights is administratively curtailed today. (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, 2022, 2021, 2016, 2015), 2 of the rights shown below were out at least one week in at least one analog year.

Where it sits in line

Priority 1867-07-01 — 231st most senior of the 21886 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: COTTAGE GROVE RES (1867-07-01)☆. Immediately behind: TARRYALL RANCH RES 1 & 2 (1867-07-01)☆.

On MIDDLE FORK SOUTH PLATTE at river mile -43.8, it is 3rd of 86 down the reach. Immediately upstream: CUMMINS PLACER PL☆. Immediately downstream: RESORT 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 (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 0.52 cfs decreed rate, the average day over the last 6 year(s) had 0.517 cfs in priority (99% of the decree). No call in effect is a free river — that was 6.4% of days.

On 8 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 33 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

6 decreed actions on record across 4 court cases: 08CW0268, CA5017, CA3286, 82CW0441.

121 imaged documents on DWR’s shelf for this structure — 71 water-court documents across 4 cases, including 4 decrees. Every row opens the scanned PDF at DWR. Listing as of 2026-09-17.

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 2303962 ↗ (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 11 seasons whose call record is complete enough to judge this structure (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026), week by week from April.

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 2 omnibus adjudications (CA3286, 317 structures; 08CW0268, 27 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 11,060 AF. Its most recent year on record, 2025, came in at 5,905 AF — 53% of that, and 3rd 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, Hoosier Pass Tunnel at Montgomery Reservoir near Alma: 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.