NEEDLE ROCK DITCH ☆ My Water

Who owns it

• The Needle Rock Ditch Company (nonprofit corporation) — probable match, from the Colorado Secretary of State business record ↗; verify before relying on it. A nonprofit corporation of this name, in good standing, with its principal office in Crawford; matched on the name and the location, not confirmed by the company.

DWR’s own records name no owner for a ditch, reservoir or well, so this comes from the source shown and can be out of date.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

NEEDLE ROCK DITCH holds 14 decreed rights on SMITH FORK. No active call senior to its rights reaches its district today (10 active calls checked), so it is in priority now. 7 further calls state no district and sit outside this one, so they are counted here rather than assumed either way. That is today's position; the weeks ahead cannot be projected for it: only 0 analog year(s) have both flow and a complete administration record; 4 needed. In a median year over its last 15 recorded years it diverts 5,714 acre-feet. It was a party to 1 court cases that also touched 1 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.

Current administration

● In priority — no active call senior to this structure's rights affects its district (10 active call(s) checked).

7 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?

The outlook for the weeks ahead is not computable for this structure: only 0 analog year(s) have both flow and a complete administration record; 4 needed. Today’s position is a separate question, and it is answered in Current administration above — that screen reads the district’s active calls and needs no reference gage.

Where it sits in line

Priority 1887-12-20 — 160th most senior of the 4666 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: DAISY DITCH (1887-10-11)☆. Immediately behind: SANTA FE DITCH (1887-12-29)☆.

On SMITH FORK at river mile -10.0, it is 50th of 209 down the reach. Immediately upstream: NEEDLE ROCK DITCH☆. Immediately downstream: WC 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 (14)

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 52.915 cfs decreed rate, the average day over the last 5 year(s) had 32.67 cfs in priority (62% of the decree). No call in effect is a free river — that was 57.1% of days.

On 285 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 14 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

19 decreed actions on record across 8 court cases: 05CW0109, CA3503, 75CW0195, 20CW0014, CA2030, CA0340, CA0038, 75CW0111.

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 4000501 ↗ (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 1 court case that also touched 1 other structure — 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 5 omnibus adjudications (CA3503, 305 structures; CA2030, 154 structures; CA0038, 77 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 5,714 AF. Its most recent year on record, 2025, came in at 3,353 AF — 59% of that, and 2nd lowest of the 15 years with a recorded volume.

Trends for this structure

Recorded use shows no clear trend over its last 15 recorded years — which is itself worth knowing.

Its reference gage, Needle Rock Ditch: 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.