WSP10231

• File Number: 8271.300
• Description: Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Program - General Information and Publications-Reports
• Basin: Colorado Mainstem
• Water Division: 5
• Date: 2/19/1980
• Author: Gregory Hobbs
• Title: Colorado Water Quality Law - Protection for Maximum Beneficial Use of Water Rights
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Report/Study

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& Milling Company, 9 Colo. App. 407, 418 (1897) (mine and
mill wastes).
Thus, the Colorado common law recognizes a right
of action for damages and injunction by water ,users against
each other to enforce that degree of water purity requisite
to their beneficial uses. The priority doctrine has no ap-
plication to these circumstances -- the question is not who
was first but whether a water use is impaired by pollution
caused by another. As a corOllary to this principle, a water
rights holder does not acquire the right to receive and
utilize pollutant constituents being carried by the stream,
even though a particular constituent in the water many en-
hance the productivity or economic benefit of the waters'
application. A-B Cattle Company v. United States, ____ Colo.
____, 589 P.2d 57 (1979).
In Colorado, by statute, the preservation of
aquatic life is recognized as a beneficial use, in that
the Colorado Water Conservation Board may appropriate,
within the priority system, quantities of water "to preserve
the natural environment to a reasonable degree." C.R.S. 1973,
37-92-102(3): Colorado River Water Conservation District v.
Colorado Water Conservation Board, Colo. , 594 P.2d
570 (1979). As a water rights holder, the Water Conservation
Board has common law rights of action to protect the purpose
of its appropriation against a subsequent junior as to quantity
and against any person who, generates a'1d causes the introducction
of waste prOducts that may impair the Board's aquatic life use.
The Colorado common law of water quality protection
for beneficial use does not recognize a right in water users
to curtail or prevent water withdrawal which may have a con-
centrating effect upon naturally occurring or man caused

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