GOOSE PASTURE TARN ☆ My Water

Who owns it

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DWR’s own records name no owner for a ditch, reservoir or well, so this comes from the source shown and can be out of date.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

The record and the river

In short

GOOSE PASTURE TARN holds 16 decreed rights on BLUE RIVER. No call currently reaches it that we can lawfully attribute, so none of its rights are being curtailed by one. 22 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 9 recorded years it diverts 1,813 acre-feet. It was a party to 9 court cases that also touched 24 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 (26 active call(s) checked).

22 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 (26 active call(s) checked), so none of its 16 rights is administratively curtailed today. (22 call(s) state no district and sit outside this one — not judged, not assumed.) In the 5 past years most like this one (2023, 2019, 2024, 2010, 2008), 3 of the rights shown below were out at least one week in at least one analog year.

Where it sits in line

Priority 1880-07-07 — 31st most senior of the 1247 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: LUSHER DITCH - DOT PLACER (1880-07-07)☆. Immediately behind: DOT PLACER WELL NO 1 - TIMBER CREEK WATE (1880-07-07)☆.

On MAINSTEM at river mile 5.9, it is 22nd of 205 down the reach. Immediately upstream: BLUE RIVER NO 3 DITCH☆. Immediately downstream: MCCAIN RESERVOIR☆.

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 (19)

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 7.64 cfs decreed rate, the average day over the last 6 year(s) had 7.64 cfs in priority (100% of the decree). No call in effect is a free river — that was 1.7% of days.

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 8 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

27 decreed actions on record across 12 court cases: 92CW0299, 00CW0172, 83CW0051, 80CW0444, W3698, CA2371, 13CW0047, 13CW0045, 87CW0243, W2962 and 2 more below.

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 3603542 ↗ (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 9 court cases that also touched 24 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 (CA2371, 58 structures; 80CW0444, 15 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 10 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 1,813 AF. Its most recent year on record, 2023, came in at 2,741 AF — 151% of that, and 8th lowest of the 9 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 9 recorded years — which is itself worth knowing.

Its reference gage, Blue River at Blue River: 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.