History of Colorado Water Law: Adaptation and Change

In southern Colorado’s San Luis Valley, acequias, still used for irrigation today, were introduced by the original Spanish and Mexican settlers. Here, landowner Dave Marquez walks with Judy Lopez with Colorado Open Lands, discussing restoration on the Culebra River which traverses his property. Marquez irrigates from the Francisco Sanchez Acequia.

Colorado water law rests on a strong foundation of territorial and state law. These laws prove a basic proposition time and again. Water is a public resource and water law evolves with the customs and values of the people.

The story of Colorado water law is one of adaptation and change. Territorial water law that was developed to promote irrigation has turned into state law that serves a multitude of human and environmental needs. Colorado’s 1890 census registered a population of 407,500. By 2019, the state’s population had grown to nearly 5.7 million. Many areas of Colorado receive little natural precipitation. The average yearly precipitation in Colorado is about 17 inches, with substantial variation across the state, from just 7 inches in the middle of the San Luis Valley to more than 60 inches in some mountainous locations. The timing of precipitation also varies throughout the year. Rivers may flood with the rush of spring snowmelt, then dry up during hot summers interrupted only by the occasional thunderstorm (see WEco’s Citizen’s Guide to Where Your Water Comes From).

In light of water’s scarcity and value in this arid region, Colorado water law is intended to provide security, reliability, and flexibility in the development and protection of water resources. • Security resides in the law’s ability to identify and protect water rights; • Reliability is assured by the system’s capacity to administer and enforce water rights over time; and • Flexibility allows water rights to be leased, sold, changed and exchanged.

This Citizen’s Guide is designed to provide a comprehensive and balanced overview of Colorado water law. It is for educational purposes only and is not intended to substitute for legal or engineering advice regarding Colorado water law or water rights.

Water scarcity has always been a fact of life in the West. The relatively new science of paleohydrology (the archeological study of ancient water structures) has uncovered ditches, reservoirs, aqueducts, cisterns and fountains crucial to native peoples for water supply and worship.

In Colorado, paleohydrologists have discovered that four mounded areas at Mesa Verde National Park—once thought to be dance platforms—were actually canyon bottom and mesa top reservoirs operated between 750 and 1180 A.D. to intercept intermittent storm runoff (see WEco’s Citizen’s Guide to Colorado's Water Heritage).

Hispanic peoples from northern New Mexico who first settled in Colorado’s San Luis Valley brought with them the tradition of community irrigation ditches, known as acequias (pronounced ah-seke-ahs). More than 350 acequias operated in New Mexico by the mid-1800s. Today in Colorado, the oldest continuous water right is the 1852 San Luis People’s Ditch, diverting water from Culebra Creek in Costilla County.

In 1861, when Congress created the Colorado Territory, Colorado’s settlement and growth depended on the ability of its citizens and businesses to obtain property rights in land and water held by the United States. Accordingly, the first territorial legislature enacted land and water laws taking the broadest possible approach toward settlers’ rights.

Federal law made public land and water available for local governmental and private use. In 1862, Congress adopted the Homestead Act for settlement on public lands. It followed with the 1866 Mining Act and other federal statutes allowing the territories and states to establish their own water laws for use of the public’s water.

Yunker v. Nichols in 1872 was the Territorial Supreme Court’s first major water law decision. The court held that water could be diverted from any stream and carried through ditches built across public and private land to bring water to its place of beneficial use. Chief Justice Moses Hallett proclaimed that, “In a dry and thirsty land it is necessary to divert the waters of the streams from their natural channels.” Justice Wells added that Colorado water law is based on “the force of necessity arising from local peculiarities of climate.”

Colorado law broke entirely away from the water law framework followed in many other areas of the country, known as the Riparian Doctrine. Under riparian law, only those with land adjoining the stream have a right to use stream water. But in Colorado, farmers with land many miles from the stream needed water to irrigate crops and ditches were necessary to get water to them. The settlers feared that riparian landowners and corporations would monopolize water for future development and deprive small farmers of a water supply. Thus, from its outset Colorado law contained actual beneficial use and anti-speculation components.

Over time, these founding legal principles have evolved into a framework of water law known as the Colorado Doctrine.

The Colorado Doctrine is a set of laws regarding water use and land ownership, adopted by the people of Colorado starting in the 1860s. It defines four essential principles of Colorado water law: 1. All surface and groundwater in Colorado is a public resource for beneficial use by public agencies, private persons and entities. 2. A water right is a right to use a portion of the public’s water resources. 3. Water rights owners may use streams and aquifers for the transportation and storage of water. 4. Water rights owners can build facilities on the private lands of others to divert, extract or move water from a stream or aquifer to its place of use, with consent of the landowners or upon payment of just compensation.