Colorado's seven water divisions

Why divisions

The Water Right Determination and Administration Act of 1969 created seven water divisions based on the major watersheds of the state. Each division has a Division Engineer's office of the Division of Water Resources (DWR), which administers water rights, and a water court, which decides water-rights cases. Drawing the lines along watersheds means the people administering a river, and the court deciding its rights, see the whole stream system.

The seven divisions

Divisions 4 through 7 all lie in the Colorado River system west of the Continental Divide (the North Platte in Division 6 is the exception — it flows to the Missouri). Divisions 1, 2 and 3 drain east and south to the Missouri–Mississippi and the Rio Grande.

Who does what in a division

• Division Engineer — leads the division office and administers water rights and interstate compacts in the division.
• Water commissioners — field staff, each responsible for one or more water districts; they set headgates to the call and record diversions.
• Hydrographers — measure streamflow and reservoir levels and run the satellite monitoring network.
• Water court — one district court in each division sits as the water court, with a water judge and a water referee.

Water courts in each division

Each division's water court hears applications to confirm new water rights, to change existing rights (for example from irrigation to municipal use, or to a new point of diversion), to approve augmentation plans and exchanges, and to keep conditional rights alive by showing reasonable diligence. Every month the water court clerk publishes a resume listing the applications filed in that division. Anyone who believes an application could injure their water rights can file a statement of opposition by the deadline the resume gives. Many cases are settled with terms and conditions that protect other users; contested cases go to trial before the water judge. The Division Engineer's office reviews applications and reports to the court, which is one reason the two are organized around the same basins.

BasinMind can read the water court resumes DWR publishes for each division, so you can ask about recent applications in your basin — but filing in water court is a legal process, and people usually work with a water attorney and engineer.

Divisions and districts

Each division is split into water districts — CDSS lists 78 across the state — usually one per tributary or stretch of river. The first two digits of every WDID are the district number. District numbers are historical and do not follow division order, so look a district up rather than guess.

Divisions are not roundtables

Colorado also has nine basin roundtables, created in 2005 for water planning under the Colorado Water Conservation Board. Their boundaries follow the basins but not exactly the divisions: there are separate roundtables for the Metro area and the North Platte, and the Southwest roundtable covers the Dolores, San Miguel and San Juan. Roundtables plan; division offices administer.

Divisions in BasinMind

Every BasinMind page works one division at a time. The division picker in the header switches Today, Reservoirs and Alerts to another basin, and Ask BasinMind answers for the division you choose. The live box above shows the current headline numbers for Division 1. Division 3's flows come largely from DWR telemetry, because USGS operates few main-stem gauges there, so its percent-of-median figures are often blank.