Topics covered (go right to article):

• Instream flows are water rights that preserve minimum river flows, typically with junior priority dates dating from 1973 when the Colorado legislature said that water can be left in the river for the river’s sake. In low-flow periods late in the irrigation season, instream flow rights rarely keep more water in rivers because water rights with earlier priority dates can keep diverting. 

• Instream flows that have a priority date before 1900 amount to only 0.3 percent of the water used in agriculture. Nearly all were donated to the Colorado Water Conservation Board, or CWCB.

• The CWCB, whose mission is to develop Colorado’s water resources, administers instream flows. It has an annual budget of only $1 million to acquire instream flows. Five state agencies must be consulted whenever a new instream flow is proposed. It’s expensive and time consuming to designate instream flows in Colorado.

• Colorado’s instream flow statute has been amended 17 times since it was passed in 1972 and has more text than the Colorado River Compact that governs the entire Colorado River.

• To appropriate an instream flow, the CWCB must find a natural environment exists that can be improved (i.e., the river does not regularly dry up); water is available for the instream flow; and no other water rights will be injured.

•  Instream flows can only be designated on rivers that have river gages to monitor instream flows. On January 1, 2025, the US Geological Service USGS monitored only 359 active river gages in Colorado, about six per county. 

• If an irrigator leaves water in the river by foregoing irrigation or by installing sprinklers, the state engineer cannot protect the water savings as an instream flow, except in special circumstances. Any other irrigator upstream or downstream can divert irrigation efficiency savings left in the river.

• Historic irrigation rights can be repurposed as an amenity for private subdivisions, thereby continuing the historic practice of keeping water out of river channels.

• Fixing the instream flow law is how we can fix Colorado’s depleted rivers. 

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Topics covered (go right to article):

• Colorado has a national reputation for restricting river access. 

•  The case of People v. Emmert took away public access to Colorado rivers in 1979. 

• Some landowners want to restrict access to rivers to avoid liability, but recreational use statutes protect landowners. 

• An injured recreator must prove the landowner intentionally injured them in order to recover damages, a case that has never been successfully brought in Colorado.

• Some real estate developers have acquired riverfront property in Colorado and then tried to bar the public from floating through despite decades of prior river use.

• Landowners claim that floating past their property is a “takings” but they must also prove damages, which likely cannot be proven.

• Tourism revenue as a whole grew 3.3 percent per year in Colorado from 2013 to 2023, must faster than the national tourism growth rate of 1.5 percent per year. But fishing tourism revenue has been declining in Colorado compared to other Western states due to the state’s river access rules.

• Colorado is one of the leading rafting destinations in the world, with the Arkansas River, the Colorado River from the headwaters to Utah, and Clear Creek west of Denver among the most rafted rivers in the United States.

• Other states including Minnesota have much more robust programs to boost river sports.

• Cities can claim a water right for recreation flows such as Golden’s water park, but as with instream flows, the recreation water right has a low priority date that it is junior to historic agricultural diversions. Front Range water providers also challenge recreational water right applications.

• Dam operators are not required to consider the effect that dam releases have on aquatic life in Colorado.

• There are a number of ways to improve river.

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Topics covered (go right to article):

• Unless it’s raining or snow is melting, all water in rivers comes from groundwater.

• Rivers follow natural laws that man interferes with at his own peril.

• Rivers need to regularly reach bankfull levels to stay healthy. Heavily-diverted Western Slope rivers rarely reach bankfull levels.

• We can improve river health by coordinating reservoir releases. 

• Rivers recover immediately when dams are removed. 

• Dams have optimal storage levels, then diminishing returns. Colorado likely reached its optimal storage level many decades ago.

• Healthy rivers have a natural hydrograph.

• One heart-breaking response to low flows is an engineered solution to narrow channels in rivers that have had their flows reduced by excessive diversions.

• River resilience refers to an ecological system’s ability to recover after a shock.

• Irrigation diversions impact river health. Colorado law incentivizes irrigators to divert water up to the full amount of the decree without regard to river health.

• Stream management plans describe the state of the river and how to improve them. They can take years to develop and irrigators and water managers are often leery of them.

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Topics Covered (go right to article)…An outline of the array of agencies formed to manage water, their roles, impact and resources. including…

• The CWCB was created in 1937, the year modern water development began in Colorado. The CWCB is a state department under the Department of Natural Resources that is charged with protecting and developing Colorado’s water resources.

• The Colorado River District was also formed by statute in 1937 to protect west slope irrigators primarily in Grand Junction from diversions through Alva B. Adams Tunnel below Rocky Mt. National Park to the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District.

• The Colorado Water Plan was developed by the CWCB in 2015 and updated in 2023 to estimate water demands from population growth through 2050.

• Colorado Water Congress is the most consequential water trade organization in Colorado. It controls the fate of almost all water legislation.

• The Roundtables are permanent local bodies created by statute in 2005 to deliberate water matters. Meetings are open to the public.

• The CWCB and the Roundtables are independent of each other. A CWCB board member serves as a liaison to each basin roundtable.

• The Northern Integrated Supply Project is a plan funded with a $100 million loan from the CWCB to develop Glade Park Reservoir, 170,000 acre feet covering 2.5 square miles, to capture water from the Poudre River where it exits the Rocky Mountains.

• Basin Implementation Plans propose $20 billion in new water projects, but plans are spotty in how much detail they provide to describe the projects.

• The Interbasin Compact Committee facilitates water transfers between basins. Its Conceptual Framework is the IBCC’s most notable achievement, a 7-point plan to permit more trans-mountain diversions from the west slope to the Front Range.

• PSOP, the Preferred Storage Option Plan, is a plan to add 12’ to the height of Turquoise and Pueblo Reservoirs to permit more water to be diverted from the Roaring Fork drainage to the Arkansas Basin.

Topics include (go right to article):

• In Colorado, “new supply” almost always refers to new transmountain diversions from west of the Continental Divide to the Front Range.

• New projects mean new people, and vice versa.

• New supplies of 100,000 acre-feet provide enough water for 750,000 new residents if they use 120 gallons per person per day.

• Colorado water planners are considering at least ten new projects that combined could transport 1.1 million additional acre-feet from the West Slope to the Front Range. That is enough water to support 8 million new residents using 120 gallons per person per day, nearly tripling Colorado’s population.

• The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation stated in 2012 that there is no more water available to develop in the Colorado River, predicting a 3.2 million acre-foot shortfall by 2050.

• While it is unlikely all of these projects will be built, two have already received most of the required permits (the Moffat Tunnel and Windy Gap expansion projects on the Fraser and Upper Colorado Rivers). A third, the Southern Delivery System in Colorado Springs, is now operating.

• Using less water through municipal conservation is cheaper than every one of these projects.

Topic include (go straight to the article):

• Cattle dominate Colorado agriculture, consuming 434 gallons of water, about a full hot tub, to produce 1,000 calories of beef.

• Hay and corn account for 88% of Colorado’s irrigated agriculture. Corn grown with water pumped from the Ogallala Aquifer is Colorado’s most subsidized crop.

• Colorado cow-calf operations are typically small, with 80% of cattle ranches selling fewer than 35 cattle per year.

• Meat packing is big business, dominated by the Brazilian company JBS, the largest meat packer in the world whose US headquarters are in Greeley. JBS captures about a third of all agricultural revenue in Colorado and skews statistics comparing east with west slope agriculture income.

• Irrigated land is worth at least three times as much as dry land in Colorado, but less than half what farmland is worth in Iowa east of the 100th Meridian.

• Nearly two-thirds of all Colorado farms lose money each year. This is true in every other state in the Colorado River basin.

• Hay is the dominant crop across the entire Colorado River basin from the Rocky Mountains to Baja California, grown on over 3.3 million acres.

• Hay reflects policy choices made in the West. Alternative policy choices are examined in a table at the end of the chapter.

Topics include (go straight to article):

• Population growth is the most controversial issue in Colorado water planning, yet is among the least discussed.

• State water planners say growth is inevitable, and yet they do not project numbers for growth past 2050.

• In the last 100 years Colorado’s population has grown six-fold.

• While the U.S. population has doubled since 1950, it has quadrupled in the seven southwestern states that signed the Colorado River Compact.

• Douglas County has been one of the fastest growing counties in the United States for decades. It has no surface water supply.

• If we want to predict what Colorado will be like in 50 years, look at California today.