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Colorado water rights, explained
In Colorado the water belongs to the public, not to whoever owns the land it runs through. A water right is permission to divert a measured amount of it, for a stated purpose, ranked against every other right by the date the use began. When there is not enough, the oldest right is filled completely and the newest gets nothing. Colo. Const. art. XVI §§ 5–6
That is the whole system in three sentences. Everything else — water courts, augmentation plans, abandonment lists — is machinery built on top of it.
Look up a water right
Colorado publishes every decreed water right and well permit in the state, free, to anyone: 173,056 decreed records and roughly 646,000 well permits DWR · verified Jul. 2026. The records are excellent. The tools are built for water engineers.
Start here to look up a water right — which database answers which question, and three step-by-step tutorials: finding structures on the state map, reading a decree field by field, and searching well permits.
Start with the section that fits
- Basics
What a water right is, and the priority system that governs it.
- Look it up
Find any Colorado water right in the state's own records.
- Buying & selling
How rights change hands, what they cost, and what to check first.
- Wells & home
Wells, rain barrels, and what a homeowner may actually do.
- Water court
Adjudication, augmentation, and when you need a water lawyer.
The questions people actually arrive with
- Who owns Colorado's water? The public does — and here is what the state's records show about who holds the rights.
- Is collecting rainwater legal? Yes, since 2016: two barrels, 110 gallons, no permit. And there is a second, uncapped route most guides never mention.
- I have a well — do I have water rights? Almost certainly not, and the difference decides what happens to you in a drought.
- What are water rights worth? Priority date, historical consumptive use, transferability — and why no honest page prints a per-acre-foot figure.
- The creek runs through my land — can I use it? No. Colorado rejected riparian rights in 1882.
- Can I still get a new water right? Legally yes; practically, most streams are over-appropriated.
The system is not a museum piece
On July 22, 2026 there were 157 administrative calls in force across Colorado — senior rights shutting off juniors, on an ordinary summer day DWR active calls · verified Jul. 2026. One of them, set on the Little Thompson River on June 27, carries an 1861 priority date. A ditch on that same river whose own right dates to 1875 is junior to it, and goes without until it lifts.
That is what first in time, first in right means in practice, and why the date on a decree matters more than anything else written on it.
How this site works
Every legal claim here is quoted from the official statute text with its effective date C.R.S. 2025 · Title 37. Every figure comes from the state's own records, with the date it was pulled and a link back to the record. Every page shows when its claims were last verified — because a page with no date is a page you cannot trust, and the alternative sites mostly have no dates.
Where a number cannot be published responsibly, we say why instead of inventing one. The methodology sets out the whole discipline, including what we deliberately leave out and how to check our work.
It is reference information, not legal advice — water rights turn on facts specific to your property, and a water attorney is who answers those. Full disclaimer.
Primary sources
- Colorado Constitution, article XVI, sections 5 and 6 (official text) effective Aug. 1, 1876
- C.R.S. 2025, Title 37 — Water and Irrigation (official text) Office of Legislative Legal Services
- Colorado DWR — water rights net amounts 173,056 records, July 22, 2026
- Colorado DWR — active administrative calls 157 active calls, July 22, 2026