JOHN MARTIN RESERVOIR ☆ My Water

Who owns it

• USACE - Albuquerque District (federal) — 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DWR’s own records name no owner for a ditch, reservoir or well, so this comes from the source shown and can be out of date.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.

In short

JOHN MARTIN RESERVOIR holds 13 decreed rights on ARKANSAS RIVER. As of 2026-09-27, 0 of them are out of priority under a call at admin 36310.00000 placed by ARKANSAS RIVER COMPACT(COLORADO-KANSAS STATE LINE). Its 13 most senior rights, back to 1871-03-13, keep diverting. 12 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 13 recorded years it diverts 75,427 acre-feet. It was a party to 4 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 (11 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 (17 active call(s) checked).

12 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?

Under today's controlling call (ARKANSAS RIVER COMPACT(COLORADO-KANSAS STATE LINE), priority 1949-05-30): 0 of this structure's 13 rights are out of priority now. (12 call(s) state no district and sit outside this one — not judged, not assumed.) In the 5 past years most like this one (2023, 2009, 2008, 2025, 2011), 10 of the rights shown below were out at least one week in at least one analog year.

Where it sits in line

Priority 1871-03-13 — 1st most senior of the 2116 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 behind: LAMAR CANAL (1875-11-30)☆.

On MAINSTEM at river mile 112.9, it is 137th of 312 down the reach. Immediately upstream: MURRAY DITCH☆. Immediately downstream: KEESEE DITCH☆.

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 (13)

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 62.97 cfs decreed rate, the average day over the last 6 year(s) had 28.989 cfs in priority (46% of the decree). No call in effect is a free river — that was 0.0% of days.

On 1216 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.

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

22 decreed actions on record across 12 court cases: 12/14/1948, 79CW0161, 79CW0160, 89CW0076, 80CW0051, 80CW0019, 07CW0074, 02CW0181, W4605, CA1434 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 6703512 ↗ (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 →

Water-court filings naming this structure

1 application in the monthly water-court resumes explicitly reference this WDID. The resume is the earliest public notice of a new claim (C.R.S. 37-92-302) — years before anything reaches the decree record below. Most applications name structures by name rather than WDID, so absence here is weak evidence of absence.

Source: Judicial Branch combined monthly resumes (archive), indexed nightly; WDIDs attached only when a 7-digit token in the filing matches DWR’s structure inventory.

Structures it shares court cases with

This structure was a party to 4 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.

Also a party to 1 omnibus adjudication (07CW0074, 19 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 75,427 AF. Its most recent year on record, 2025, came in at 60,676 AF — 80% of that, and 6th lowest of the 13 years with a recorded volume.

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

Call-derived yield: senior right divertible 0.0% of a median season / 0.0% dry-year.

Trends for this structure

Recorded use shows no clear trend over its last 13 recorded years — which is itself worth knowing.

Its reference gage, Arkansas River below John Martin Reservoir: no clear flow trend.

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.