WSP07510

• File Number: 8200.760
• Description: Yampa River General
• State: CO
• Basin: Yampa/White
• Water Division: 6
• Date: 1/1/1981
• Author: USGS
• Title: Assessments of Impacts of Proposed Coal-Resource and Related Economic Development on Water Resources - Yampa River Basin - Colorado and Wyoming - A Summary - 1981
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Report/Study

presented any major problems in the Yampa River
basin. However, the doctrine of prior appropriation
also applies to tributary ground water.
Surface water is available in widely varying
quantities from year to year, and from location to
location. Naturally occurring hydrologic variability
often reaults in water shortages in certain areas or
during certain times when and where demand for
water exceeds the supply.
In the Yampa River basin as well as elsewhere in
the Western States, a traditional means of water
allocation involves use of a priority date. The
priority date is that legally recognized point in
time, as defined by State statute, when water was
first put to beneficial use by someone seeking the
adjudication of a water right. As long as there is
sufficient water available to meet the demands of
all water appropriators, few problems occur. When
insufficient water exists to meet all demands at a
given point in time, then the priority date is used to
allocate the available water. Those priorities most
recent in time (junior priorities) must allow suf-
ficient surface water to pass by their points of
diversion in order to let downstream priorities
earlier in time (senior priorities) receive the water
due them, according to their decree as adjudicated
by the judicial system.
Another factor complicating water administra-
tion is a hierarchy of beneficial use. For most
western States, these include, in descending order:
domestic water supply, agricultural use, industrial
use, and recreation. Recently, minimum-flow re-
quirements for protection of aquatic life have been
added to this ordering.
When allocating water in water-short areas, the
use of water may be of a higher order than the
priority date. However, statute and case law as
developed from these provisions in the courts (at
least in Colorado) has set the priority date as the
primary means for allocating water in water-short
areas with the provision that a higher order use,
such as domestic, could acquire a lower order use,
such as irrigation, through condemnation
proceedings. For example, an irrigation water right
with a priority date senior to a domestic water right
will get its water first if there is not sufficient water
to fill both decrees. However, the domestic right
may acquire the irrigation right through condem-
nation proceedings and the payment of just
compensation as detennined by negotiation or
judicial decree.

.,

Water rights in Colorado are estllfiithrOugh
adjudication procedures in the ju . ,not
through the State Engineer's OfflC . ing,
the State Engineer oversees the adjudication of
water. A water right is recognized as a property
right and can be bought and sold the same as any
other piece of property. At the same time, the water
right must be used or it is subject to loss through
established judicial procedure. A water right is
decreed to a point of diversion-not to an in-
dividual-and it is decreed for a specific use or set
of uses. Any change in use is subject to judicial
review, which allows for protection of the rights of
all appropriators-both senior and junior.
The judicial framework for administering water
law is discussed by Knudsen and Danielson (1977)
for Colorado and by the Wyoming State Engineer's
Office (1970) for Wyoming. Case law has had a sub-
stantial effect upon water law and administration.
Statutes alone cannot give total guidance in all
situations where there have been and will be dif-
ferences of opinion as to the statutes' meaning and
intent. Case law affecting water rights normally
arises from one of two types of litigation: that
which is a direct challenge of statute; and that
which evolves from civil suits, the end result of
which directly affects water law. Some examples of
interest are given by Knudsen and Danielson
(1977) .
The agriculturally oriented purpose for several
projects proposed in the Yampa River basin by the
U.S. Water and Power Resources Service (U.S.
'Bureau of Reclamation) has been reoriented
towards energy-resource development (U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation, 1974; Weatherford and
Jacoby, 1975; Jacoby and others, 1976). These and
other proposals consider the transfer of surface
water out of the basin. In order to detennine what
the in-basin effect would be for a given project con-
figuration, any such modification would require a
reevaluation of the entire water-distribution
system of the basin.
Two interstate compacts directly affect the
amounts of water available for energy development
in the Yampa River basin. The Colorado River
Compact of 1922 (Colorado Revised Statutes, 1973,
Art. 37-61) states that use of water in the Upper
Colorado River Basin by the States of Colorado,
Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico will not cause
the flow of the river at Lees Ferry, Ariz., to be
depleted below an aggregate of 75 million acre-ft
(92.5 billion m3) in any successive la-year period.

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