Colorado water, in plain language
The water on that listing might not be there.
A decree is not a delivery. Put in an address and get one page that says what the state's own records show: the right, whether water has actually arrived, what the well is allowed to do, and where the aquifer is going.
The screen is free, no account. The full report is $95.
- Topsoil
- Sand and gravel
- Clay
- Sandstone
- Saturated
vertical scale in feet, horizontal schematic
Why nobody checks
The records are free. Reading them is the hard part.
Colorado publishes all of it, and none of it is built to be read together. Twenty-seven sources, no shared address, and the one key that joins them is the 19th century survey grid. Water rights are filed against a headgate, not a parcel. Diversion records carry 127 water classes and only one of them is the answer. Court filings arrive as Word documents, one division at a time. And in southern Colorado the survey grid simply stops: land granted under Spanish and Mexican rule was never divided into sections at all.
- Water rights, by structureno address field
- Decree history and abandonmentone comma-separated code
- Diversion records, monthly127 water classes
- Water court resumesWord files, one division at a time
- Well permits and outcomes807,804 events
- Crop water requirement4 of 7 basins modelled
- Aquifer monitoring wellsdepth over time
- Streams and stream gaugesnamed, never mapped to a parcel
- Federal mineral estatewho owns what is underneath
- County assessor parcels43 separate sites
- Survey grid, section by sectionthe only shared key
- Land grantswhere that grid stops
- Soil, flood, wildfireT-SQL over POST
one page
Start here, free
See how much there is to know before you pay for it.
Put in a property and the screen tells you how many things the record holds and roughly where they sit. No card, no account. If the section is quiet it says so, which is the only way it is worth anything when it says the opposite.
Free screen
160 acres, Morgan County
T4.0N R58.0W Sec 26 · Morgan County
6 things that would change a deal, 5 worth knowing, 7 that check out clean.
Drawn from 14 public record sources.
- would change a deal
- worth knowing
- checks out
- What the court has done to them
- The rights themselves
- Whether the ground is irrigated
- Whether the water is in priority
- Hazard
- Who holds the water
- Who else may use the surface
- Whether water has actually arrived
- Whether it is enough water
- Wells
- Where the aquifer is going
- Whether the creek runs
The screen says how much there is and where. The full report names each one, says what it means for this ground, and links to the state record it came from.
What you get
A verdict, and the record it came from.
No dashboard to learn and no data to interpret. Each finding says what it means for this piece of ground in a sentence, then names and links the state record behind it, so your water attorney can check every line of it.
Example report
115 acres, Saguache County
S14 T44N R9E · Water Division 3 · Rio Grande basin
Sample
Problem
The state measured nothing delivered here for fifteen straight years.
acre feet delivered, as measured by the state
- water delivered
- measured, nothing delivered
- no record filed
- Last year with water
- 2000, 55 acre feet
- Measured at zero
- 2008 to 2022, all 15 years
- No record filed
- 2001 to 2007
- Water class read
- Total (Diversion)
- What that means
- A decree on paper with no delivery behind it. The reason is not in the record.
Source: DWR diversion records, approved
- Nothing is inferred. A missing record reads as missing, never as zero.
- Every number is dated. You can see how fresh each source was when it ran.
- Web and PDF. Attach it to the file you are already building.
What it reads
Every water record Colorado publishes.
- 173,085
- water rights, with priority dates and decreed use
- 807,804
- well outcomes: who drilled, who hit water, who plugged it
- 2,359,504
- parcels, with owners and acreage, all 64 counties
- 27
- public record sources, every figure linked to its own
- Diversion records, measured
- Abandonment and decree history
- Crop water requirement
- Augmentation plans
- Water court filings, monthly
- Irrigated acreage, mapped
- Administrative calls
- Aquifer levels over time
- Streams, perennial or not
- Federal mineral estate
- Oil and gas wells
- Public land
- Soil and septic
- Flood and wildfire
Find out before you are in diligence.
The screen is free on any property. The full report is $95, or $1,490 a year if you look at land for a living.