WSP06480

• File Number: 8546.200
• Description: AWDI - Mailing Lists/Correspondence
• State: CO
• Basin: Rio Grande
• Water Division: 3
• Date: 6/6/1983
• Title: The San Luis Valley Groundwater Dispute
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Report/Study

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3.

The first case to come up under the new act was
Kuiper v. Well OWners, 176 Colo. 119, 490 P.2d 268
(1971). The State Engineer had written Rules and
Regulations on the South Platte calling for curtail-
ment of wells within certain defined zones,
depending upon the time of effect of well pumping on
the stream. Before the regulations were
implemented, well users brought an action to enjoin
their implementation based on numerous procedural
and substantive arguments. The injunction was
issued by Judge Carpenter. The Supreme Court
vigorously reversed, with Justice Groves asserting
that it was time to get on with it. One important
issue in that case was the assertion by the well
users that no surface water right holder could call
for water until he had first resorted to the use of
any wells that he might own and was still
unsatisfied. In effect, the well users sought and
the trial court granted a ruling construing wells as
alternate points of diversion for ditch rights where
the two were in common ownership. The Supreme Court
reversed, construing the statute to be permissive
concerning the tying of surface rights to
underground alternate points of diversion, but not
mandatory.

4. In 1978, the Supreme Court decided the case of
Kuiper v. Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Co.,
195 Colo. 557, 581 P.2d 293 (1978), reviewing
proposed amendments to the Arkansas Rules and
Regulations. Leaving undisturbed rules and
regulations previously promulgated and unprotested,
the Court voided attempted amendments which would
have increased the degree of regulation, saying that
additional studies had not been done to justify any
amendments based upon experience under the original
rules and regulations.

5. The San Luis Valley case had itself been to the
Supreme Court previously on procedural matters
(Kuiper v. Gould, 196 Colo. 197, 583 P.2d 910
(1978)), where it was determined that the present
rules and regulations should be promulgated and
reviewed in a single proceeding, in light of the
State Engineer's dual authority for interstate
compact administration under C.R.S. 1973 ~37-80-104
and for groundwater administration under C.R.S. 1973
S37-92-501.

6. The substantive legal situations of the San Luis
Valley were not fundamentally different from those
in the South Platte and the Arkansas. Groundwater
diversions, which were generally, but not in all
cases, junior to the surface rights, taken

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