Last verified Jul. 2026

Can you still get a new water right?

The constitutional guarantee, and its limit

The state cannot stop you appropriating. What it can do — what prior appropriation does automatically — is put you at the back of a queue that is already longer than the river. When 157 administrative calls are in force across the state, as they were on July 22, 2026, a 2026 priority is out of priority almost everywhere almost all of the time. DWR active calls · verified Jul. 2026

What it takes to create a new right

Three things, in this order.

1. An intent, and a first step

An appropriation must be a real plan for a real use, not a position taken in the hope of selling it later. The statute is blunt about that:

The anti-speculation doctrine requires you to have either a vested interest or a reasonable expectation of an interest in the land or facilities to be served, and a specific plan and intent to divert a specific quantity for specific uses. Colorado does not allow water banking by hopeful investors.

2. Diversion and beneficial use

You must actually take the water and use it, in an amount that is reasonable for the purpose and free of waste C.R.S. § 37-92-103(4). Until then, what you have is a conditional water right — a place in line, maintained by periodic diligence filings in water court, that becomes absolute when the water is finally used C.R.S. § 37-92-103(6).

3. A decree

Then you adjudicate: an application to the water clerk, publication in the resume, an opposition window, a referee ruling, and a decree. The priority date awarded is the date the appropriation was initiated, if it was completed with reasonable diligence C.R.S. § 37-92-305(1).

For a conditional right the court applies the "can and will" test, and for an absolute one it wants the water already used:

What a new right is actually worth

Ask one question: how often would a 2026 priority be in priority on this stretch? On an over-appropriated reach the honest answer is often "during spring runoff, in wet years, for a few weeks." That may be perfectly adequate if you are filling a pond or irrigating pasture opportunistically. It is useless if you need water every August for houses.

Which is why real Colorado water development almost always looks like one of these instead:

• Buy a senior right and change it. Buying water rights and the change case that follows.
• Augment. Divert out of priority and replace the depletions under a plan for augmentation.
• Buy into an existing supply — a tap from a municipal provider, or shares in a ditch or reservoir company.
• Rely on an exemption. An exempt well needs no decreed right at all, within its limits.

Where new appropriation still makes sense

It is not hopeless everywhere. Genuinely unappropriated water still exists in some headwater reaches, in wet-year high flows, and in tributaries with few seniors. New rights are also regularly decreed for uses that do not depend on firm yield: storage that fills in spring, recreational in-channel diversions, instream flow rights held by the Colorado Water Conservation Board, and augmentation-supported industrial uses.

The way to find out about your reach is to look, not to guess. Pull the decreed rights on your source and see how many are senior to you, then check whether a call is on — looking up a water right walks through both. And read how the court works before filing anything; the rest of the legal section covers what you are stepping into.