FLOOD00213

• County: Statewide
• Community: State of Colorado
• Title: Water Rights Determination Systems Study CWCB
• Date: 5/6/1988
• Floodplain - Doc Type: Educational/Technical/Reference Information

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Status of the annlications
Table 2 lists the status of all the change applications by ,area filed
through the end of 1987. It is important to recognize that a number of the files
listed as "unapproved" may be decided upon by the time this manuscript reaches
publication. The available data indicates that a change applicadon filed during
the years 1980-1987 has a 13\ change of being unapproved, and a 3.2\ chance of
being either rejected or withdrawn,.1>y the end of 1987.

Tvne of chanlZe
Table 3 illustrates the type of changes for which filings were made. In
each of the years studied, at least 50\ of the applications involved a request
for a change in the nature of use. This grouping involves a specific change in
water use, whether it be from agriculture to domestic, agriculture to stock
water, or anyone of several other possible changes. This category involving a
change in the nature of use also often is accompanied by an alteration in the
point of diversion and/or place of use. 19\ of the applications involved requests
to relocate the point of diversion, with the water being utilized for the same
purposes and place of use. 25\ of the total number of applications filed involved
changes in the place of use and/or point of diversion, with no alteration in the
nature of use.

Ouantitv of water
A significant number of change applications involve multiple uses, each
with varying periods of use. Some data overlap exists in the reporting of both
flow rates in cubic feet per second (cfs) and volumes of water in acre-feet
(AF). The data overlap was not sufficient however to provide a reliable
correlation with which to make additional assumptions.
Figures 2 and 3 illustrate the distribution of water filings by cfs and
AF respectively according to the available data. Applications involving between
.004 and .015 cfs were the most frequent. Figure 8 shows that nearly half the
filings, recorded in AF, involve less than 5 acre-feet of water. A detailed
breakdown of the filings by individual area is shown in tables 4 and 5.
It is not possible to merely sum the quantities of water listed in the
change and exchange applications in order to determine total quantities involved
in a specific set of transfers. This situation results from the fact that
multiple filings often exist which in essence use the same water. For example,
the Bureau of Reclamation holds water rights on several hundred thousand acre-
feet of water used in conjunction with the Central Utah Project's Bonneville
Unit. The two rights in particular include application numbers a37093 and a40523
which involve water from the Provo River and Utah Lake, respectively. In a sense,
one of the filings is merely "paper" water in that it may not really exist in
a useable sense. The intent of the USBR is not to utilize both rights
simultaneously, but rather to maximize their ability to move and transfer water
as needed throughout the system to obtain the 300,000 tangible acre feet of
useable water. The key to the system is an exchange right filed under E398.
Similarly, other public entities and private individuals may be involved in like
operations. To accurately measure the quantity of water effectively transferred
is beyond the scope of the present study.

Time from filin~ to status
Table 6 illustrates the distribution of time in days between the filing
of the change application to the decision of the State Engineer for the years
1980 to 1986. The numbers presented in table 6 represent only those files which
have been approved, withdrawn, or rejected by the State Engineer. A general

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