About BasinMind

What it is

BasinMind brings together public water data for Colorado's seven river basins and makes it readable. It shows:

• River flows from USGS and Colorado DWR gauges, compared with the median for the date;
• Administrative calls — which water rights are being curtailed — and the priority of the calling right, from DWR;
• Reservoir storage from DWR telemetry and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation;
• Snowpack from NRCS SNOTEL, and drought from the U.S. Drought Monitor;
• a Map, pages for structures (ditches, reservoirs and wells by WDID), Today's digest and Alerts;
• Ask BasinMind, which answers questions in plain English or Spanish by reading the same public data.

A public good

BasinMind is free to use. There are no ads, and we do not sell data about the people who use it. You do not need an account to read any page or to ask a question. The data it shows is public; BasinMind's job is to gather it, keep it current and explain it.

Who it is for

Anyone who depends on Colorado water: irrigators and ditch companies, acequia parciantes, ranchers, small towns and water providers, conservation districts and extension agents, anglers and boaters, students, journalists and residents who want to understand their river. Ask BasinMind lets you choose a role — farmer, rancher, ditch company, acequia, municipal water, extension agent and others — so answers focus on what matters to you.

Advisory only

BasinMind is advisory. It reads public records; it does not administer water. The Colorado Division of Water Resources (the State Engineer's Office), its Division Engineers and water commissioners are the authority on water administration, and only a water court decree defines a water right. Before you act on anything — opening a headgate, buying or leasing water, filing in water court — confirm with DWR, your water commissioner or a qualified professional.

A pilot

BasinMind is a pilot. Data sources are sometimes slow or unavailable, and some divisions have fewer gauges with long records than others. When a figure is missing or stale, BasinMind says so rather than fill the gap. AI answers are checked against the data they used, but they can still be wrong. The Methodology page explains how figures are gathered and how answers are checked, and Sources lists every agency and dataset.

Feedback

Every answer from Ask BasinMind has a thumbs up / thumbs down below it. A thumb sends the question, the answer and the role and basin you chose, and you can add a short note. That is the best way to tell us an answer was wrong, unclear or missing something; reviewers read them and use them to improve the answers. Nothing is sent unless you click.

Learn more

The Learn section explains the ideas behind the data — prior appropriation, calls, WDIDs, compacts, acequias, drought and snowpack — in English and Spanish.